Welcoming gesture recognition into autism therapy

Gesture imitation has recognized benefits as a therapy for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Even tough automatic gesture recognition has advanced greatly in the last years, its application in the field of autism therapy has been mostly irrelevant. In this paper we present a solution that: 1) integrates gesture imitation into storytelling therapies; 2) is capable to learn new gestures without an explicit learning stage; 3) provides automatic gesture recognition capable of assisting therapists during interventions, and might support social skills practice at home.