ITP: Developing Assistive Technology

For our assistive technology project Karri, Diana and I are sewing a postural correction device for Sophie (her pseudonym), who has autism. Sophie has difficulty maintaining posture, by either entering to a completely flaccid or tensed state which affects her ability to concentrate. We are making a garment she can wear which will help her center, become more aware of her posture, and reinforce positive behavior. Using multiple vibrating motors, we are attempting to develop a 'haptic language'. To track progress all postural data, output and response times will be logged to a device also incorporated into the garment.

Here are pdfs of presentations we've made to date:

Presentation #1, introduction, what's out there
Presentation #2, input/output, more specific research
Presentation #3, proposal of our plan

-- Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:14 -0400

Soft Switch + Scratch

For Assistive Technology Karri, Diana and I had to make a switch, which
could be used by any part of the body but the hands. I thought it would
be a useful exercise to make a soft switch, and so that's what we did.
The idea is the switch can be placed anywhere, for example the floor, so
you step on it to trigger without worries of breaking anything with the
pressure of your foot.

The switch consists of a layer of fabric, a conductive strip (GND), a
piece of mesh fabric (to separate power and ground), another conductive
strip (+3.3V) and finally the top of the switch.





The switch plugs into a USB mouse we hacked to add a 3.5mm female stereo
jack connection. The mouse does the hard work by feeding our switch data
to the computer. We then made a Scratch game for an autistic child.

Karri has a student who has difficulty coordinating limb control, and
cannot tell the difference between left and right. The Scratch game
consists of a unicorn galloping down a diving board - step on the button in
time and unicorn flies away, miss it and uh oh, into the pool we go!
The left and right side buttons are color matched with the screen output
to aid in the learning of direction. The game also helps practicing
motor control with the longterm goal of overall improvement.



-- Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:46 -0500

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