HKUST develops AI agent to support autistic children to facilitate early screening and intervention

China News Service, Hong Kong, November 11 (Reporter Qiu Zhaoxiang) The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ("HKUST") held a press conference in Hong Kong on the 11th to introduce the latest one-stop autism support artificial intelligence agent (AI agent) developed by the school team - ASD Super Agent. The platform integrates three major functions: early screening, personalized intervention, and continuous family follow-up to help parents and doctors identify potential risks of autism and seize the golden window period for interventional treatment.

According to the R&D team, the team visited a number of special education institutions, child development centers and hospital psychiatric departments in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Beijing, and communicated with nearly 500 parents of autistic children. R&D researchers found that many children faced multiple problems such as long waiting times, high treatment costs, and complicated information during the treatment process, thus missing the best treatment period.

Based on the above survey results, the R&D team focused on the three major functions of early screening, personalized intervention, and continuous family follow-up during the design process. The AI ​​agent can generate risk assessment and analysis reports by analyzing videos of children's daily activities, questionnaires and other content uploaded by parents. The intelligent body has more than 20 evidence-based autism intervention programs built into it, which can provide reference for clinical treatment and provide personalized intervention suggestions based on different conditions of children.

Chen Kayou, professor of the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analysis at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that ASD Super Agent is positioned as an auxiliary tool and aims to provide a professional analysis platform that is on call around the clock and responsive to needs at any time for the treatment of autistic children. HKUST hopes to open this platform to families with children free of charge, so that children in need can enjoy the dividends of cutting-edge technology.

Looking forward to the future, the team said it is considering combining the AI ​​agent with embodied intelligence to develop conversation toys that can move with children, collect behavioral data during the conversation, identify risky behaviors and proactively push warnings to solve the pain point of parents having difficulty detecting autism-related signals in an early stage.