Sensorized toys to identify the early ‘Red Flags’ of autistic spectrum disorders in preschoolers

Abstract

The observation of the games in children affected by autistic spectrum disorders is an important and widely used diagnostic method, which, at the state of the art, is conducted in a clinic with the direct observation of the specialist. This paper presents a prototype of a sensorized toy that can detect movements and orientation of the toy in real-time so to allow for an indirect observation of the young patients. This will open to new ways of performing such tests in a non-invasive way and in the own environments of the patient. The prototype is based on a low-power platform embedding accelerometers, magnetometer and gyroscope, and on a server that provides different views to the specialist in real-time.