Past Research
- Past Research
- VR System for Improving Social Skills in Teenagers with Autism
- Robot-mediated Response to Joint Attention System for Children with Autism
- Robotic intervention platform for older adults with mild cognitive impairment and dementia
- Collaborative Virtual Environments
- Social interaction skills tutoring using collaborative Augmented Reality (AR) environment for children with ASD
- Assistive avatar in virtual reality puzzle game to improve eye gaze perception in children with ASD
- Physiology-based Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment Driving Task
- Intelligent Agent
- Physiological Data Processing and Physiology-based Emotion Recognition
- EEG-based Affective Computing
- Cognitive Load Measurement
- IntelliCane: Intelligent Walking Cane System
- Tactile Stimulation Device
- A Haptic Virtual System for Improving Fine Motor Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Teddy Bear Robot
Personnel:
Goals/Objectives:
Fine motor skills, including gripping, holding and reaching, are useful and necessary in fundamental daily activities. However, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show deficits and delays in fine motor skills compared to their peers. Thus we propose a virtual training system enabling the assessment and improvement of fine motor skills for children with ASD through haptic interaction in a low-cost and engaging virtual environment with real-time feedback (e.g., haptic, auditory and visual feedback).
Outline:
The haptic virtual system consists of a Haptic Gripper allowing users to manipulate (e.g., grip and move) virtual objects in the games and thus provides opportunities for users to improve finger and hand motor control. The Haptic Gripper can detect the spatial position of the user’s hand and finger pressure as well as apply haptic feedback on the user’s hand. The haptic feedback combined with visual and audio feedback provides real-time guidance that helps the user to make appropriate manipulation adjustments in time.
We have developed a series of virtual games for one user as well as for two users to play together. These games were designed in such a way that the user needs to apply appropriate finger pressure to adjust the inner-distance/rotation of virtual objects and simultaneously move these objects toward targets.
Publications:
- H. Zhao, A. Swanson, A. Weitlauf, Z. Warren, and N. Sarkar, “Design of a Haptic Virtual System for Improving Fine Motor Skills in Children with Autism,” accepted by the 8th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2017) and the Affiliated Conferences.