| Abstract: | Neurodevelopmental engineering is a new interdisciplinary research area at the intersection of developmental neuroscience and biomedical engineering, mainly concerned with quantitative analysis and modeling of human behaviour during neural development. Along such a line, our research focuses on early diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, typically diagnosed after 2–3 years of age. With the purpose of beating new paths in the emerging field of neurodevelopmental engineering, we propose a novel approach to the assessment of basic patterns of goal-directed actions in developing babies, in the 0–24 months of age range, both under laboratory and naturalistic conditions. In particular, we propose novel mechatronic devices, either wearable or embedded into toys, for ecological, unobtrusive assessment of infant behavior. Guidelines for the design of a particular toy embedding both kinematics and force-sensing capabilities as well as of experimental scenarios where similar instrumented toys can be deployed are provided. Preliminary experiments for the technical validation of an early prototype in ecological conditions are also presented. |
