Limited studies exist that explore motion-based touchless applications for children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and investigate their design issues and the benefits they can bring to this target group. The paper reports a structured set of design guidelines that distill our experience gained from empirical studies and collaborations with therapeutic centers. These heuristics informed the design of three touchless games that were evaluated in a controlled study involving medium functioning ASD children at a therapeutic center. Our findings confirm the potential of motion-based touchless applications games in technology-enhanced interventions for this target group. BACKGROUNDThe Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a general term for a group of complex disorders of brain development, characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors often accompanied by sensorimotor impairments. Autism, estimated to affect 1 of every 88 children, is marked by the presence of impairments along a triad of dimensions: social interaction, communication, and imagination. Children with autism show a great variance of symptoms, ranging from a delay or a total lack of spoken language to a severe impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors that regulate social interaction, to a failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to age. ASD children also show imagination inability, manifested in the difficulty to generalize between environments, in a limited range of imaginative activities and in a difficulty in figuring out future events and abstract ideas. This reflects to a lack of spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play and tendency to repetitive and stereotyped patterns of activity. Other behavioral symptoms include hyperactivity, short attention span, impulsivity, aggressiveness, self-injurious behavior, and temper tantrums. Studies conducted to consider the effectiveness of digital technologies for ASD children reveal that these tools are in general well received [16]. A digital environment provides stimuli that are more focused, predictable, and replicable than conventional tools. It also reduces the confusing, multi-sensory distractions of the real world that may induce anxiety and create barriers to social communication. In addition, digital tools can exploit the benefits of visually based interventions adopted in existing therapeutic practices such as video modeling [6]. Existing products and prototypes for autistic children exploit a variety of technologies and interaction modes, from desktop to multitouch mobile devices, tangibles and digitally augmented objects, robots [11], and more recently, touchless motion based environments, enabling users to interact using body movements without any physical contact with digital tools. The goal of our research is to design, develop and evaluate touchless motion based games that can be used for educational and therapeutic purposes in different contexts -school, therapeutic center, home...

We exploit recent advances in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) technology to create the "Magic Room", a smart space created for use by children with Neurodevelopmental Disorder (NDD) and their caregivers. The Magic Room has been designed in cooperation with NDD specialists and supports multimodal embodied interaction by providing controllable stimuli to the vestibular, proprioceptive, and tactile sensory systems through various smart devices, e.g., ambient projections, physical objects, toys, ambient and mobile lights, aromas, and soap bubbles. We have deployed the Magic Room at two therapeutic centers. We performed exploratory studies with eight caregivers and nineteen children with severe impairments in the NDD spectrum, who used the smart room across four months with encouraging results. Our work may pave the ground for new research in the arena of CPSs for subjects with NDD and inspire new interventions for this target group.

We propose a new emotional, huggable, mobile, and configurable robot (Teo), which can address some of the still open therapeutic needs in the treatment of Developmental Disability (DD). Teo has been designed in partnership with a team of DD specialists, and it is meant to be used as an efficient and easy-to-use tool for caregivers. Teo is integrated with virtual worlds shown on large displays or projections and with external motion sensing devices to support various forms of full-body interaction and to engage DD persons in a variety of play activities that blend the digital and physical world and can be fully customized by therapists to meet the requirements of each single subject. Exploratory studies have been performed at two rehabilitation centres to investigate the potential of our approach. The positive results of these studies pinpoint that our system endeavors promising opportunities to offer new forms of interventions for DD people

This paper presents the design and evaluation of IMAGINE, a novel interactive immersive smart space for embodied learning. In IMAGINE children use full-body movements and gestures to interact with multimedia educational contents projected on the wall and on the floor, while synchronized light effects enhance immersivity. A controlled study performed at a primary school with 48 children aged 6-8 highlights the educational potential of an immersive embodied solution, also compared to traditional teaching methods, and draws some implications for smart-space technology adoption in educational contexts.

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