Meltdown/Tantrum Detection System for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The intensive and explosive behavioral problems associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are treated as ‘meltdown or tantrum,’ and it may lead to hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, self-injury, and irritability. The present work aims to propose and implement a noninvasive real-time deep learning based Meltdown/Tantrum Detection System (MTDS) for ASD individuals. The noninvasive physiological signals (such that heart rate, skin temperature, and galvanic skin response) were synthetically recorded with a specially designed hardware prototype. The recorded physiological signals were transmitted to an internet connected server where deep learning algorithms such as CNN, LSTM, and CNN-LSTM based Meltdown/Tantrum Detection System (MTDS) were implemented. The trained deep learning model was capable of detecting abnormal states of meltdown or tantrum through real-time received physiological signals. The proposed MTDS system was trained and tested with deep learning algorithms such as CNN, LSTM and hybrid CNN-LSTM, and it was found that hybrid CNN-LSTM was outperformed with an average training and testing accuracy of 96% with low MAE (0.10 for training and 0.04 for testing). Furthermore, 86% of the ASD caregivers favored the proposed MTDS system.