A Paraeducator Glove for Counting Disabled-Child Behaviors that Incorporates a Bluetooth Low Energy Wireless Link to a Smart Phone

Behavior tracking with severely disabled children can be a challenge, since dealing directly with a child's behavior is more immediately pressing than the need to record an event for tracking purposes. By the time a paraeducator ('para') is able to break away and record events, behavior counts can be forgotten. This paper presents a paraeducator glove design that can help to track behaviors with minimal distraction by allowing a paraeducator to touch their thumb to one of their other four fingers, where each finger represents a different behavior. Count data are packaged by a microcontroller board on the glove and then sent wirelessly to a smart phone via a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) link. A customized BLE profile was designed for this application to promote real-time recording. These data can be forwarded to a database for further analysis. This para glove design addresses basic needs of a wearable device that employs BLE, including local data collection, BLE data transmission, and remote data recording. More functional sensors can be added to this platform to support other wearable scenarios. BLE