According to the United Nations, disability inclusion is “an essential condition for ensuring human rights, sustainable development, peace and security”. As part of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, celebrated on 3rd December, Instituto Superior Técnico is pleased to announce a social media campaign to share research projects with a positive impact on the lives of persons with disabilities.

The research units affiliated with Técnico contribute, in these and other ways, to improving access to information, education and learning, reinforcing the role of innovation for an accessible and equitable world.

Center for Innovation in Territory, Urbanism and Architecture (CiTUA)

• The multisensory loggia for urban resilience to climate change
  The research focuses on the experience of persons with and without disabilities, aiming to innovate spaces such as arcades through social justice in adapting buildings to climate change.
• Territories of space injustice in Portugal
  The Território.justo.pt project focuses on identifying and proposing corrections to the asymmetries, imbalances and functionalities of urban spaces. There is a concern about integrating the needs of different population groups, adapted to the scale of work, since the project aims to approach the city and the territory as a space of inclusion and, therefore, as a space of all, for all and with all.

Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB)

• New cellular models for Angelman syndrome
  Angelman syndrome is a rare disorder that causes delayed development during childhood, lack of speech, epilepsy and inability to coordinate voluntary movements. This project is generating new cell models that will be used to study this disorder;
• EURAS: A new project on neurodevelopmental RASopathies
  Based on stem cell engineering, the project focuses on creating disease models, in particular the rarer forms of RASopathies (cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome, Costello syndrome and SYNGAP-related encephalopathy), to test the effectiveness of treatments.

Mechanical Engineering Institute (idMEC)

• Exoskeletons for children with upper limb impairment
  Development and production of a personalised exoskeleton for children with upper limb limitations, taking into account the case of a child with osteomyelitis of the humerus. The project aims to reduce the user’s strain during day-to-day movements.
• Customised ankle and foot orthosis using optimisation methodologies
  Development and production of a customised AFO (Ankle-Foot Orthosis). The orthosis was used continuously for three years by a teenager with spina bifida, showing improvements in terms of performance, comfort and durability of the structure.
• Cosmetic hand prostheses for children
  Development and production of personalised cosmetic hand prostheses for children with hand hypoplasia. A prosthesis was produced using additive printing with flexible materials, applied to the case of a two-year-old child with a congenital malformation of the right upper limb, improving its function and, therefore, his self-esteem and quality of life.
• Functional hand prostheses for children
  Development and production of a passive functional hand prosthesis for children with hand hypoplasia. In preliminary tests, the prosthesis showed a movement pattern similar to that observed in a healthy hand.
• Personalised foot prosthesis for children
  Development and production of a personalised foot prosthesis using additive printing of a personalised prosthetic foot for children aged between two and five, to improve the performance of lower limb prostheses for that age group. The prosthetic foot was tested on a bi-amputee child.
• Serious games for upper limb rehabilitation
  Development of a computer tool for upper limb rehabilitation based on biofeedback and gamification strategies. An interactive game was developed, whose characters are controlled by the player’s movement. The game mechanics were designed to promote movements usually performed in upper limb physiotherapy sessions. This solution was applied to a case study of a child with elbow calcification.
• ShakeAM: Sharing knowledge in design for AM
  The ShakeAM project aims, among other things, to support teachers in familiarising themselves with digital pedagogies, incorporating inclusive teaching practices into higher education courses. By using digital tools as ‘equalisers’, ShakeAM will enable students with disabilities to benefit from teaching resources and programmes to their full extent.

Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores: Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID)

• All Sustainable: Digital serious game for empowering sustainable citizens with intellectual disabilities
  The project aims to create a game to empower people with intellectual disabilities to become aware and active citizens in the challenges of sustainable development. It is being developed by actively involving users in the process of discussing their needs and generating ideas for the game.
• EMPOWER: Technological support tools in digital education
  The project aims to create a digital educational platform that facilitates the assessment and training of children’s emotional skills using games adapted to their intellectual capacity, neurodevelopmental disorder and age. It aims to empower children with, for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder and learning difficulties, as well as their teachers, using new technological learning tools to make their education more accessible and inclusive.

Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR)

• Feedbot: The robotic arm
  In Portugal, thousands of people find it difficult to feed themselves and have to rely on the help of others at mealtimes. Robotics can help, as demonstrated by Feedbot, a robotic arm that aims to give people with motor difficulties the opportunity to feed themselves autonomously. After sensing the environment and locating its user’s face in real time, this robotic “buddy arm” can place food in a safe position for ingestion.
• NAO Robot: Therapy for autistic children
  Development of an imitation game in which children practise different gestures while being imitated by the NAO robot. With the gesture recognition system, the robot can reward the child when he/she performs the exercise correctly.

Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI)

• ACCembly
  Teachers and parents of visually impaired children find it difficult to find conventional educational tools and toys that don’t need to be adapted. ACCembly is a coding system that uses tangible blocks to promote inclusive computational thinking for visually impaired children, thus teaching digital literacy and eliminating educational barriers. The project is being developed in partnership with the Faculty of Sciences of Universidade de Lisboa, at the Large-Scale Informatics Systems Laboratory (LASIGE).
• DCitizens
  DCitizens aims to promote research and innovation in Digital Citizenship in Lisbon, currently supporting two initiatives: Balcão do Bairro (a network of services for the most vulnerable citizens in Lisbon to solve problems of access to digital public services) and ComPartilhar (expanding its Community Sponsorship programme for the efficient inclusion of refugees as active citizens).
• DiversiBots
  DiversiBots is a project to co-create robotic games with neurodivergent children and their neurotypical playmates that has produced two main results: the game “A Fuga do Tubarão” (“The Shark Escape”) and the co-design kit “PartiPlay”. “The Shark Escape” is a board game that uses a small robot and augmented reality to provide an inclusive gaming experience for neurodiverse groups of children. The “PartiPlay” design kit includes handicraft activities and accessible worksheets, providing a set of tools that can be used by other researchers who work with neurodiverse groups of children. The project is being developed in partnership with INESC-ID, at the Group of AI for People and Society (GAIPS).
• Emotions2US
  Aimed at stroke survivors and their carers, Emotions2Us consists of an interactive light with which the stroke survivor and carer interact, expressing their emotional state via a keyboard with a colour-based emotion scale. It is a device that helps stimulate support and dialogue/communication between the survivor and caregiver, stimulating their relationship and improving their emotional well-being.
•  TACTOPI
  TACTOPI is an inclusive, multisensory play environment that uses tangible interaction and a robot as the main character. This system was designed to support play in children with different visual abilities. It also enables the learning of introductory computational thinking concepts integrated into playful activities with narratives that promote environmental education for visually impaired children aged four to seven.
• The Mind
  The Mind project consists of a system with an interactive robot and three tablets, allowing three participants to play a game collaboratively, interacting with each other and with the robot. The latter can give both visual and auditory clues about its cards, adapting to the hearing difficulties of the other players, enabling collaboration between people with and without hearing difficulties.
• Touchibo
  Touchibo is a robot with dynamic textures, lights, smells and sounds that can mediate group conversations between children and enrich narrative experiences. It will allow children with and without visual impairments to share sensorial experiences that facilitate interpersonal communication between humans and robots.

Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT)

• HALO: Silently controlled language generation
  A language model based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is combined for the first time with a ‘hands-free’ controller (based on bioelectric muscle signals), allowing the user to hold a conversation in a seamless and simplified way. Using non-invasive tools, HALO will allow patients who cannot speak to communicate with the outside world.