We are a research group working at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology, one of the institutes of National Research Council of Italy (ISTC-CNR). Together with therapists and neuropsychiatrists, we have developed “+me (PlusMe)”, the world’s first Transitional Wearable Companion (TWC): it is an experimental device that could potentially support the development of basic social skills (eye contact, joint attention, social referencing) in children with the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
It is based on a soft, animal-shaped robot, which can potentially motivate the child to interact with a caregiver, during the therapeutic activities. “+me” is designed to arise emotional attachment, through a reassuring, comforting, physical contact. When +me is touched or caressed by the child, it responds emitting coloured lights and sounds, according to the site of contact. These are generally very rewarding stimuli for children, and are able to draw their attention. However, +me responses can be mediated by an adult caregiver (i.e. a therapist or a parent), according to child’s reactions. Through a Bluetooth connected tablet, the caregiver can modify the outcomes of +me: for example, she/he can change the colour of lights or the type of sounds, looking for the most rewarding ones, and removing the most unpleasant; she/he can even disable some particular outputs if dysfunctional behaviours (like stereotypes) are observed. In a nutshell, the caregiver can create several activities and adapt the +me behaviour to the child’s temper. The control of +me is shared between child and caregiver, the former triggering +me responses through touches, the latter mediating such responses through the tablet. If a child intends to obtain a particular rewarding +me outcome, she/he has to interact with the caregiver.
We run a preliminary experimental phase, where +me was tested on 15 healthy children aged between 10 and 34 months, during playful activities. This experiment (now awaiting for publishing), helped us to get the first qualitative and quantitative data about the observed behaviours, namely: behavioural data on healthy children, essential for comparison in next experiments involving children with ASD first evaluation on effective mental ages of intervention, based on the interest aroused by +me on children preliminary observation about basic social behaviours (i.e. eye contact, social smiles) raised during interaction between child and therapist, with the mediation of +me.
For the moment, due to lack of direct funds, we could only produce two hand-made working prototypes, which were successfully used in the preliminary experiment. This dramatically limits the speed of the current research: it is very important to run several, different experiments on different groups of ASD children, in order to evaluate the efficacy of +me and its long-term effects for therapy. This means that we need a set of devices, which have to be more robust, more reliable, technically improved and officially certified for 100% safe usage.
That is the reason why on the 4th of April 2018, we are launching a crowdfunding campaign on the platform Indiegogo to support the project. For now, we are compiling all the email addresses of people we thought could be interested in contributing or spreading the word. Please be registered and share this link: igg.me
On the 4th of April, the link will redirect you to the Donation Page. Thank you very much for helping us make this world a better place.
Website: www.plusme.it
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