For Audrey, a sixth grade autistic student with a rare genetic disorder and profound neurological differences, a ball is not just a toy but a source of comfort.
But that makes play a little difficult — after all, what good is a ball if you never let it go?
“She likes to hold it,” explains Larry Sanchez, a physical therapist with the LABBB Educational Collaborative who works with “Miss Audrey.”
“It’s counterintuitive for her to push it,” he says.
Enter Northeastern University’s Enabling Engineering class, where students Jose Garza, Arushi Gupta, Alden Rivers and Romina Dianderas have developed a musical ball to encourage Audrey to share and play.
“The biggest thing I learned from this project was how to work with a client that had a set of particular needs on a short timeline,” Rivers says. “As engineers we can always make something that caters to these needs and makes the world easier to live in for people like Audrey.”
The Enabling Engineering class applies engineering to enable and empower individuals with disabilities. In the class, teams of students are paired with clients who have requested everything from a camera mount for a filmmaker who uses a wheelchair to a bow and arrow designed for people with visual impairments.
Audrey is a student in the LABBB Educational Collaborative — a program that designs and provides special education services in the most inclusive settings possible.
She is working with Sanchez, and LABBB therapists Jo-Ellen Percival and Cheryl Rogers on developing gross motor skills using a ball such as passing, sharing and rolling.
But a normal ball just wouldn’t do.
Audrey needed something interactive, exciting, responsive and — perhaps most important — durable.
The result was delivered to Audrey and her therapists on Monday.
From the outside, the toy looks like an unassuming bright purple ball. But buried within its consumer casing is a cylindrical core of specialized electronics designed specifically for Audrey.
The ball’s plastic shell is wrapped in conductive material that recognizes when it is being held, and the ball then lights up and plays Audrey’s favorite songs when released.
“Hearing songs that she is familiar with is good,” says Gupta, a senior majoring in bioengineering at Northeastern. “And there’s nothing as nostalgic as Disney!”
Adapting off-the-shelf materials and developing an idea quickly with their clients is part of what the students in the class learn. In fact, this project utilized the shell of a commercial hamster ball, which was then customized with a 3D-printed internal core housing multiple custom circuits, a microprocessor, speakers and programmable lights.
The electronics core can be removed to turn the toy on and off and to change its batteries.
The students say that the project involved overcoming several challenges.
“I learned about the importance of designing a product for a child with special learning abilities, as the market is more geared towards the average kid,” Garza says.
The students had to find a ball that would be light, hollow and yet durable enough to protect the electronics inside and withstand the play of an 11-year-old.
Garza, meanwhile, had to find a way to fit a circuit board, speaker, lights, batteries and other electrical components into the core of the ball and make them functional.
Dianderas incorporated speakers and an audio microcontroller to the ball to allow it to play personalized Disney songs for Audrey. She also led the durability testing.
Rivers ensured that every component was properly secured as the ball rolled, flew through the air, was manipulated or landed on the ground.
Gupta even taught herself to sew in order to develop a fabric cover for the ball.
“I don’t know how to cook, so sewing really impressed my mom,” Gupta says, laughing.
But the most important person to impress was Miss Audrey.
And impress her, they did.
Audrey’s eyes lighted up as bright as the lights on the ball when she rolled the toy down an incline to the students. She smiled, laughed and nodded as “Hakuna Matata” and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” came from the ball’s speaker.
“You guys did great,” Sanchez told the students.
Dianderas says that seeing Audrey play with the toy made the challenges the team faced worth it.
“Creating something entirely new presented its challenges,” Dianderas says. “But the troubleshooting and obstacles along the way were ultimately worthwhile, resulting in the rewarding experience of seeing Audrey successfully use the final product.”