Development and Evaluation of Stress Ball with Embedded Sensor for Exercise and Muscle Strength Assessment in Autistic Children

This study describes the construction and testing of a ball with built-in sensors that is intended to evaluate muscular strength and promote exercise in autistic youngsters. To measure the throwing force and the squeezing strength, the ball has inbuilt accelerometers and force sensors. This research highlights how technology-assisted therapy can benefit autistic children's physical health and development. The data collected by the stress ball included force data by the FSR sensor, timestamps and the acceleration data from the MPU6050 sensor. The stress ball uses the Bluetooth module to transmit data wirelessly to a remote device running python script which store the data for later analysis. The pressure data and the acceleration data generated during the squeezing action and the throwing action were collected across 6 weeks. The average of the peak force and the acceleration data were plotted for multiple weeks. The results showed that there was a 26% increase in the squeezing force exerted by the child in the duration of 6 weeks. Whereas the acceleration caused during the throwing action did not show any significant trend as the values kept fluctuation without any identifiable pattern.