SENSES OF ADVENTURE

CREATING “BENDABLESOUND,” PROFESSOR FRANCELI CIBRIAN DESIGNS WITH A VISION: “THESE KIDS DESERVE TO HAVE FUN.”

Push it, pull it, twist it! The stretchy fabric panel set up in a school in Tijuana, Mexico, for children with severe autism seemed magical: Tap it and a glowing blue galaxy emerged. Slide your hand across it and piano music played. But “BendableSound” is more than a game. It’s a high-tech, hightouch music therapy intervention designed by Franceli Cibrian to build motor skills in neurodiverse kids.

“‘BendableSound’ and a smartphone version we designed during the pandemic support development by using several senses at the same time,” says Cibrian, an assistant professor in Chapman University’s Fowler School of Engineering. “The music, visuals and movements of the children all match up. For instance, if you push harder on the fabric, the volume of the music increases. This makes it easier for the brain to process the experience and control movements.”

Cibrian fell in love with human-computer interaction as a graduate student at the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education in Mexico.

“One of the ideas I’ve always had is that technology should be beneficial and available for all, no matter your background, diversity, income or disability,” she says. “It can have huge benefits for children and teens with neurodiversity.”

Today, her research at Chapman focuses on the design, development and evaluation of ubiquitous interactive technology to support child development. Her projects, often in collaboration with experts from other institutions, get results.

“BendableSound” worked as well or better than traditional music therapy for improving strength, coordination and reaction times in a 2020 study of 22 children, ages 4 to 8, with autism. An exercise game called Circus in Motion that adjusts to a child’s abilities increased the amount of activity kids got compared to traditional vestibular system exercises for balance and coordination, according to a 2021 study.

In a preliminary 2020 report, a smartwatch app called CoolCraig, developed and tested with Cibrian’s colleagues at UC Riverside and UC Irvine, was well received by preteens and teens with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and their parents. More research is planned. Parents and kids use CoolCraig together, setting goals for activities and behaviors and deciding on rewards. A smartwatch app provides reminder notifications to kids, while a smartphone app lets parents monitor and support them.

The goals are serious. The big bonus? This assistive tech is really fun.

“These kids deserve to have fun,” Cibrian says. “One of my favorite examples is little kids using their whole bodies –their heads, their backs –as they explore the elastic fabric of BendableSound. They’re learning to control their bodies and having a good time as they do it.”

PROFESSOR DHANYA NAIR’S HEART LAB USES HAPTICS TO MAKE REFRESHABLE BRAILLE DISPLAYS MORE ACCESSIBLE.

What if a tiny, low-cost Braille display could fit on a smartphone? Inside the HEART Lab at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Engineering, Dhanya Nair is harnessing the science of touch to make such assistive technologies widely accessible and easily portable.

With a grant from the National Science Foundation, Nair will soon test a refreshable Braille display that uses an array of rounded pins instead of dots on a page to create an ever-changing stream of information, two to three Braille characters at a time. She envisions the device fitting on the case of a smartphone or computer tablet for instant translation of messages, search results and even touchable versions of graphics, emoticons and map directions for the sight impaired.

“Refreshable Braille displays on the market now are larger and can cost thousands of dollars,” says Nair, an assistant professor of engineering at Chapman.

“My lab wants to develop a version that’s affordable not just in the U.S. but also in places like India, where 40 percent of the world’s people with blindness live.”

Another of her ongoing research projects is the “haptic sleeve,” a fabric sleeve with four motors that deliver vibrations to the forearm. “We are testing whether the vibrations help train hand movements,” Nair says. “Right now we’re studying it with handwriting in healthy people. The hope is to use it in the future for rehabilitation for motor disabilities such as after a stroke, when some people lose the ability to control their hands and have to relearn how to write.”

A haptic sleeve study will launch this summer, looking at the best way to use vibrations to direct movements for making cursive letters.

Ever curious about the science of touch, Nair has added a twist called Tactile Music. “I want to know whether you can re-create the experience of listening to music as vibrations, such as for the hearing-impaired,” she says. “We’ll translate instrumental music that’s classified as happy or sad or calm into vibrations, play them using the sleeve and ask study participants which emotions they relate to it.”

This summer’s study, in potential community partnership with the Braille Institute Anaheim Center and Beyond Blindness of Santa Ana, will fine-tune the system by testing whether subtle vibrations or a sideways motion of the pins make the characters more legible.

“Braille is read by moving your fingers across it, not by pressing down on one character,” she says. “We are adding movement to simulate that sensation.”

The name of Nair’s lab – an acronym that stands for Haptic Educational Assistive & Rehabilitation Technology – refers not just to Nair’s focus on haptics (technology that produces the experience of touch) but also to her passion for using it to fill unmet human needs.

Professor Dhanya Nair’s lab is testing a haptic sleeve that delivers vibrations to the forearm. The hope is that someday it might help stroke victims relearn how to write.