TOP! Together to play!

TOP! Together to Play, is a suite of video games based on the eye-tracking system that favors the rehabilitation of children aged 3 to 12 with complex neurological problems and that allows the collection of data for a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the rehabilitation process. TOP! in fact, it can be customized on the characteristics of each child, on the specific motor needs or on the specific responses to the instrumentation.

Children with complex neurological diseases have significant cognitive difficulties, aggravated by motor disability. For this reason, they often do not have the opportunity to speak, express themselves or convey their emotions and their communicative potential. TOP! favors a rehabilitation program designed specifically for the most complex children who have no other possibility of expression than their eyes.

The encounter between technologies based on eye tracking and play as a form of engagement make TOP! an innovative tool for a customized rehabilitation of the child. On the one hand, the games, simple and captivating, work on learning and the development of basic cognitive functions in a precise and sequential way. On the other hand, the technological system allows you to calibrate the eye-tracker on the individual child in 5 simple steps and allows the control and management of the single play session by modifying parameters such as time, fixation or speed, for a tailor-made rehabilitation. .

The games, inspired by traditional street games, are divided into training, cognitive and entertainment, and are designed to meet different levels of complexity.
3 Training games where the child, through ocular interaction, is called to respond to cause / effect inputs, such as, for example, the pursuit of figures on the screen.
4 Cognitive games involve the systematic exploration of space and the logical collection of visual data, such as "Hide and Seek" in which the child has to look at the footprints sequentially to find opponents or "Witch Command Color" in which the child develops the ability to classify and discern one or more classes of objects with the same characteristics.
3 Games designed to involve the child in pure entertainment activities and aimed at venting aggression, such as "Pillows", "Sack Race" and "Poisoned Ball" in which the child challenges the computer trying to escape the viewfinder .

The TOP platform! it is distributed free as a Windows application and works with Tobii eye-tracker. No PC interaction is required: only the interfaces that can be controlled by the care-receiver via the eye-tracker are presented on the screen, minimizing distractions.

The tablet app has the function of "control panel" and allows the start of games and the calibration of the eye-tracker, the control of the session and the management of the game phases, such as adding, removing or moving elements, vary the dynamics, pause, solicit attention with sound and visual prompts and increasing or decreasing the difficulty levels. In addition, the app allows the care-giver to view in real time where the care-receiver's gaze is on the scene.

TOP! it was co-designed and built by a multidisciplinary team composed of OpenDot Fab Lab - research and open innovation hub, in collaboration with the therapists of the TOG Foundation and Dotdotdot for design, development, User Experience and Interaction Design; WeAreMuesli for game design; the PhuseLab UniMi - Perceptual computing and Human Sensing Lab for research and quantitative analysis of data; the Mondino Foundation for research and qualitative analysis of data on ocular response.

The project was financed by winning the three-year funding call from the Just Italia Onlus Foundation, with the project “Giving a voice to your eyes”, now in its second year of development.