Design and development of sensorized toys for monitoring infants' grasping actions

Measuring grasping actions and forces in human infants is an important issue in many clinical contexts; by analyzing infants' typical development in unstructured environments it is possible to define standards against which to evaluate any condition of abnormal motor development. This work focuses on the development of biomechatronic tools, in particular a “little gym” composed by a set of instrumented toys equipped with a variety of sensors designed for the assessment/stimulation of motor actions of the upper limb of infants between 4 and 9 months of age. The aim of this work is to develop a mechatronic platform able to measure and stimulate infants' movements during the acts of reaching and grasping. In order to check the whole functionality of the mechatronic toys, in terms of working range, sensitivity, acceptance by the infants, some experimental tests have been performed with 7 infants aged from 4 to 9 months, for a total number of 350 measurements. The results confirm the hypothesis that the platform represents a valid tool for continuous monitoring and quantitatively measuring infants' manual function and motor development, without being distressful for the infant.