Children with autism have a hard time both with expressing their emotions, and with understanding the emotions of others. As the population of children with autism increases, it is crucial we create effective therapeutic programs that will improve their communication skills. We present an interactive robotic system that delivers emotional and social behaviors for multi-sensory therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders. Our framework includes emotion-based robotic gestures and facial expressions, as well as vision and audio-based monitoring system for quantitative measurement of the interaction.

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are an exciting technology that will revolutionize physiological monitoring in the coming years. However, the widespread deployment of WBANs is restricted by steep energy limitations. Furthermore, they require acute security measures to protect user medical data. We aim to measure the energy consumption of a cellphone as it transmits and encrypts data in a mock WBAN scenario. We evaluated the impact of various design parameters in an effort to discover the ideal WBAN operational protocols. In conclusion, we recommend an optimal file size strategy, data communication network, and encryption algorithm that minimize energy consumption and enhance WBAN operation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.