A Survey of Available Games for Autistic Children and Others

During your study of the state of the art games for autistic children, you might want to complete a few tasks:

1. Autistic Games Apps: Could you come up a detailed survey of all the available games, and summarize your results in a table? You can reference to the survey done by Group 8 & 9 as an example. The table should include columns such as game names, categories, platforms, descriptions, companies, prices, websites, your evaluations, etc.
2. Non-Computer Autistic Games: Could you come up a survey of all the available non-computer games, and summarize your results in a table? The table should include columns such as game names, categories, descriptions, companies, prices, what can you do better using computer, etc.
3. General-Purpose Games: I am also curious about info about general purpose games. Is there any statistics about what are the favorite general purpose games that autistic children played? If yes, are they beneficial to them according to the categories: “coping with change”, “matching emotions”, “finding a route”, and “making eye contact”. You can make a table to summarize your results. You may learn important lessons from those apps.
4. Customer Input/Feedback: In addition, could you search for some nearby organization serving autistic children? Can you visit them to get some insight? You might want to interview special education teachers in our school who had previous experiences in this area. Once you have finish the apps, what are the channels to distribute the apps to autistic children and evaluate their effectiveness?

These surveys and the input/feedback of autistic children and educators will form the foundation of your apps. We will discuss your results after the break.

STEM Project Proposal

Project Proposal:

• Our new proposed project is the creation of video games intended for autistic children. The idea is to study the common challenges that autistic children face and create games to help them learn how to deal with these problems. Another thought on this project is to possibly expand the project to other mental disorders common in children, depending on how long work on games for autistic children takes.Once we complete at least one game, we plan to create a website using awardspace.com which will allow us to post these games. Additionally, our games will function both on a computer as well as on a mobile touchscreen device.

Plan:

Week of:

12/20 - 12/26: Conduct research on autism in children, as well as a state of the art research. Create several ideas for games.

12/27 1/2: Assign game to each team member. Both of us will draft plans for our games, like a checklist. We will subsequently begin work on the games.

Beyond this, a schedule is hard to foresee, as we don’t yet have an idea of how complex our games may end up being. In the beginning of week 12/27 - 1/2 we will add make our schedule more specific since we’ll know what our games will be.

We’ve begun research on Autism and the state of the art already, here is what we’ve found:

Characteristics of Autism include difficulties with social interaction, communication, as well as behavioural issues. More specifically:

Social Interaction:

• limited use and understanding of nonverbal communication such as eye gaze, facial expression and gesture
• difficulties forming and sustaining friendships
• lack of seeking to share enjoyment, interests and activities with other people
• difficulties with social and emotional responsiveness

Communication:

• delayed language development
• difficulties initiating and sustaining conversations
• stereotyped and repetitive use of language such as repeating phrases from television

Behavioural:

• unusually intense or focused interests
• stereotyped and repetitive body movements such as hand flapping and spinning
• repetitive use of objects such as repeatedly switching lights on and off or lining up toys
• insistence on sticking to routines such  travelling the same route home each day and doing things in exactly the same order every time
• unusual sensory interests such as sniffing objects or staring intently at moving objects
• sensory sensitivities including avoidance of everyday sounds and textures such as hair dryers, vacuum cleaners and sand
• intellectual impairment or learning difficulties

As part of our state of the art research we came across this website:

http://www.autismgames.com.au/

This site has five games available, all intended to help autistic children develop independent living skills under the categories: “coping with change”, “matching emotions”, “finding a route”, and “making eye contact”, which the site states are all common challenges faced by autistic children.

Weekly Progress Report 12/7 - 12/13

Progress:
- This past week we haven't made much progress, as we've actually been set back. We had Mr. Lin check over the third problem (the second 2D one) on Friday, and about a third of the way through it, we had made an error that made the rest of our solution incorrect. We're still trying to figure out a solution for the rest of it now. We also had Mr. Lin explain the orientation of the dimensions for the 3D problems, so we're working on tackling those as well.

Problems:
- Part of our problem this past week was Henry being sick all week, which slowed down work. Besides that our only problem was the set back with us having faults in our solution to the third problem.

Plan:
- Our plan this week is to just continue work on these problems, ideally finish them. 

Weekly Progress Report 11/30 - 12/6

Progress:
-  This past week we worked on the physics problems given to us by Mr. Lin. They wound up being more complicated than we originally thought, but we've made significant headway, now being halfway done with them. They didn't require anything too complex, but the challenge was figuring out what we needed to use to solve each part. Solving these problems and more like them will gradually build up to doing the math behind the real life situation (a drone defense system).

Problem:

- Our problem this past week has been with the 3-D problems. We had finished one of the two 3-D problems only to later learn after reviewing it that none of our work really made sense. We're finding it hard to decipher the diagrams for the 3-D pictures as far as where each axis is pointing. We need Mr. Lin to explain this to us tomorrow. Unfortunately we are currently behind our scheduled plan for completing these problems.

Plan:

- This week we hope to have Mr. Lin approve the two problem we've already done, as well as help us understand the 3-D ones so we can complete those as well. Once those are done, we plan to go to the next level with solving these problems, whether that's adding elements like air resistance or combining the situations to include a full interception device (a camera and launcher).

RE: Patent Search

Excellent patent list and outstanding analysis. Even though the perfect intercepting system may have to include many existing patents, it doesn't mean that there is no room for improvement in each aspect of the system. Especially when you start the implementation process, you will get more insights into the potential problems of existing methods. Any problem can lead to a new invention!