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Welcome to STEM II

Course Description

In STEM II, a course taught by Dr. Crowthers at Mass Academy, students work together in groups to develop an assistive technology device to help a client of their choice. Throughout C and D terms, teams document their design process through structured reports as well as through ongoing logbooks and project updates. The course ends with a year-end STEM fair, where teams showcase their final products and research to the broader community.

Developing a Sensory Overload Detector for Individuals with Autism

Problem Statement/Solution

Sensory overload, an event in which the brain is overwhelmed by too much sensory information and struggles to process it, often leads to feelings of stress, anxiety, or even panic among subjects (Schedyt et al., 2017). Although this is an issue that people who don’t have autism also face, it has a much stronger effect on people with autism and therefore must be addressed to maintain the health and safety of various communities. Sensory overload can have devastating effects, and to mitigate the damage that is done by such a destructive disorder, it must be detected as soon as possible. A caretaker of a person with autism may not be able to immediately identify when sensory overload is occurring. Therefore, the implementation of an assistive technology device is required for safety and quick detection of sensory overload episodes.

Our goal with this device is to create a reliable, non-invasive tool that can detect environments in which an individual may experience sensory overload. The device would then notify the user as well as their caretaker before their sensory overload episode escalates. By concentrating on physiological markers such as light intensity, sound intensity, and heart rate, we hope to create a solution that is adaptable to the individual sensory thresholds of each user.

Design Approach

As we began our project, my group and I conducted background research to better understand the problem we aimed to address. By doing this, we were able to gain a strong understanding of sensory overload and how it affects individuals with autism. his research helped us gain insight into the causes, symptoms, as well as existing solutions and gaps in current technologies. Once we finalized our project idea—an assistive device designed to detect and help manage sensory overload—we focused on defining the important components that we wanted out device to have. This allowed us to to create a clear direction for our design development moving forward.



Prototype

The prototype consists of a glove that is designed to allow a user’s hand movement to not be constricted, and also includes three main sensors: a light sensor, a sound sensor, and a heart rate sensor. These sensors are positioned in the optimal areas for functionality and comfort. The light sensor is attached to the back of the hand, where it will likely get the most exposure to light. Likewise, the sound sensor is located at the heel of the glove, where the body would naturally receive sound input. Finally, the heart rate sensor is positioned along the wrist to be in contact with a vein for an accurate reading.

The device also comes with a working app, which displays real-time sensor values and identifies when any value exceeds the user’s customized thresholds. These thresholds can also be inputted manually through the app, allowing the device to be tailored to the user’s unique sensory tolerance. Moreover, the device is designed as a wearable glove so that the sensors and the device overall permit movement. When it comes to safety, the prototype relies on insulated wires and low-voltage elements to ensure it is safe to wear daily.

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Poster

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