Design projects motivated and informed by the needs of severely disabled autistic children.

Technology can positively impact the lives of severely disabled autistic children if used to (a) gather situational awareness data regarding their health, development, and behavior and (b) assist them with learning and day-to-day activities. This paper summarizes student design projects in the Kansas State University (KSU) College of Engineering that are motivated and informed by the needs of severely disabled children at Heartspring, Wichita, KS. These efforts are supported through the National Science Foundation's General and Age-Related Disabilities Engineering (GARDE) program. Projects relate thematically to (1) facets of a bed sensor system that unobtrusively tracks nighttime health parameters and child activity and (2) miscellaneous resources geared toward paraeducator ("para") and child well-being and development.

Clinical overview of the need for technologies for around-the-clock monitoring of the health status of severely disabled autistic children.

Despite the growing incidence and costs of autism, little has been done to apply technology advancements to the challenges faced by autistic individuals. The recent introduction of digital data collection to track the progress of treatment interventions has been an important contribution, but there are many other opportunities for technology to facilitate the development of autistic children and to assist the clinical staff who work with them. The realization of wearable devices to identify and track behaviors would significantly reduce the manual input of data into digital devices, and wireless physiological monitoring has the potential to provide predictors of unwanted behaviors. The development of such tools would change the intervention paradigms that currently exist.