Last month, we reported that the National Autistic Society is working with the University of Exeter on a state-of-the-art project to use extended reality (XR) and gaming technology to help autistic people overcome challenges they face in driving a car.
We spoke to project lead Dr Tom Arthur to find out more…
Photo by James Yarema / UnsplashHi Tom. First off, what is ‘extended reality’?
This refers to a group of technologies that blend physical and digital worlds to create immersive user experiences. The most common types of these use a virtual reality headset to simulate or augment real space around you. When wearing these headsets, you can usually interact with the virtual elements while exploring the real space. You might have also seen something like this on your phone, called ‘augmented reality’ or ‘mixed reality’.
Yes, I’ve got a stargazing app: I hold my phone up to the night sky and it tells me what stars and constellations I can see.
Exactly. There are lots of applications for this kind of technology — and things it can still do. We’re aiming to work with large groups of neurodivergent people to build a tool that can support autistic drivers. For instance, if you’re a learner, our future tool could allow you to practice in XR — maybe at home or some other comfortable setting you know. That way you can build up skills so that you feel more confident and safe getting out on the road.
Where did the idea come from?
We did some research during my PhD looking at the difficulties some autistic people have with motor skills and sensory processing. We looked at a number of different ways to study that, one of which involved an XR version of tennis. The idea was to study how autistic people played the game and where they potentially had difficulties controlling their movements.
As a science experiment, with a measurable outcome.
Yeah. We were developing that idea — not quite at the stage to apply for further funding — and I was asking people what they thought. One person said to me, ‘Well, yeah, I’d like to be better at tennis but it’s not exactly something I need.’ We talked about what would be more useful and they said, ‘If I want to visit my friends, I have to ask for a lift or get the bus — which I don’t like. I’d like to drive myself.’ We then talked to lots of other people at large group workshops and support for driving was overwhelmingly popular.
What issues do autistic people face with driving?
It depends on the individual person. Research has shown that there are the sensory and movement difficulties I mentioned. But there’s also challenges around other things, like anxiety and perceived safety. We’ve had some really good discussions with neurodivergent people in our steering group and co-design teams about whether we target skills or the experiences people have while driving.
What’s the difference between skills and experience?
In recent years, we’ve come to realise this story is quite common. In fact, organisations like the National Autistic Society and Autistica have been doing some amazing work on barriers to employment and this issue keeps coming up: the practicality of getting there, accessibility issues, and challenges relating to driving or transport.
How do you address that?
Well on the most part, accessibility barriers and issues shouldn’t have to be dealt with by autistic people – organisations and society should be doing more to make things more inclusive. We are spending time on this project trying to suggest changes that can be made across the driving sector. But obviously, some things on the road cannot be easily controlled. So, we are also trying to develop new support for autistic people that directly focuses on common driving challenges.
Research suggests that one way of gaining confidence is through experience. The person I mentioned previously maybe needs some additional support to help them build strategies for dealing with the pressure. But if you go out on the road, you never know exactly what’s going to happen — it’s completely uncertain. In XR, we can control the environment. You can tailor a scenario to the individual driver and then adapt it in real time, adding things so it’s a little more challenging or personalised. This could be a safe way to build up that confidence and skill.
So this is a tool for tackling anxiety.
Anxiety is part of it but there’s also confidence and the experience you build up over time. I work in a sports science department where pressure, stress and performance are a big area of research. We understand how athletes train physically and mentally, building up skills and what are often individual, personal strategies to reduce anxiety and improve performance.
Does that mean you’re developing a psychological approach to driving?
It’s an interdisciplinary project, most of the academics on this project would consider themselves cognitive psychologists but we’re bringing in people from lots of very different fields, like public health research and computer sciences. Then there’s the applied aspect of this and the issue of equity, so whatever we build is accessible to anyone who might benefit from using it. A key thing is our participatory approach. We’re designing it with autistic people, as partners and advisors in the whole process, who are actively leading the work.
How many people are involved?
We have a pretty large group of people involved. As well as the autistic people themselves, we have academic researchers, stakeholders from organisations such as the National Autistic Society and also technology companies. We’re engaging with driving organisations like the DVLA.
That presents some challenges — it’s impossible to get that many people all in one room. We’ve had virtual and hybrid meetings with different groups and I’m doing some things in person. We’re guided by research on how to be more participatory and inclusive. Some people don’t feel comfortable in large groups or have issues getting to the university where I work. So it’s about adapting how we work based on who we’re meeting and what the aims are of an activity. That’s all part of the participatory approach, too.
What stage are you at with things?
It’s relatively early in the co-design phase. We’re about to do a round of workshops to hone exactly what the tool will look like.
You mean a specialised VR headset?
There are lots of options. We may need to build something completely from scratch. However, there’s lots of stuff available now for XR driving games: headsets, steering wheels and dashboards, pedals and gearsticks. We’ve spoken to tech companies so we know what’s in development, too.
Either way, our main focus is how we use this technology — or create something new — so that it helps address the specific challenges and barriers faced by autistic people. A lot of what I do as a researcher is explore the fidelity of XR technologies. For example, a racing game might include an element of clutch control but how close is that to reality? If it’s very close, we can maybe use the same technology so that users can practice hill starts. But you need quite a high level of fidelity for that. So we need to be sure it effectively does what we want it to do in supporting autistic people.
That’s the thing. Once we’ve had those workshops, we’ll build something then take it back to our groups for feedback. We’ll cycle through that process: what do people think, what needs improving, what haven’t we considered? The aim in the longer term is to produce a prototype and run a full-scale evaluation to gather lots of data. That’s how we’ll establish whether this really works.
We look forward to hearing more as the project continues. Thank you.
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