Innovation in Autism wins eCYBERMISSION Grade 8 Southwest Region

Innovation in Autism


Mirman School for Gifted Children; Los Angeles, Calif.
Team Members: Jonathan Berman, Maya Flannery, Arjun Mahajan and Arnold Lesin (Team Advisor)

The mission of “Innovation in Autism” was to develop a device that would autonomously sense stereotypy, one of the most common behavioral issues in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and respond with vibration, cueing the child to stop engaging in this behavior. The students used the Lilypad™ set of electronics to build their device and deduced the parameters that would be required to program it. Following approval from The Help Group’s Institutional Review Board, they tested the device on children with autism. At this stage of prototype development, the team has created a device that records human motion and proves that the duration and frequency of autistic children's stereotypy greatly decreases with vibration therapy. In the future, the team plans to record data from more test subjects to increase its sample size and thus, the validity of its study.

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