Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SocSensors (Social wearable sensors to support engagement and learning in children with autism + learning difficulties.)
Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2022-02-28
The Socsensors project aimed to develop new wearable sensor system for autistic children which will track how they coordinate with each other and with their teacher during lessons. This will allow us to quantify social engagement so that teachers, parents and researchers can track engagement and better understand what kind of lessons can help a child engage and learn. Data collection for this project was severally impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but we were still able to collect 48 neurotypical-child datasets and 38 autistic-child datasets. Preliminary analysis shows that the sensors are able to detect social engagement in the children as we hoped. Further analysis is underway. The project is continuing with a HEIF grant to develop industry collaborations and we will be working with our industry partners to advance this sensor system over the next few years.