Educational Recreational Family Garden Project for People with Autism

Nowadays there is a large quantity of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Due to lack of daily life activities, playful opportunities at early ages and unemployment resources and labor training in young adults and adults some autistic people can show high levels of stress and anxiety. There are methods that has proven that visual instructions, including photos, drawings or physical objects are highly motivational and can engage people with ASD to follow instructions and perform guided activities. This paper proposes horticultural activity by a sensory instrumented hort as the way to improve cognitive, social, physical and psychological skills in autistic people. This is translated to reduce stress and anxiety levels as a result of an outdoor activity. The system is designed with visual supports, like pictures or animations, that can show children or adults the activity to be performed, and the current health of plants in the hort. The system will show graphically if plants need attention and attend the scheduled activities, anticipating the action that they have to do. The name of the project has been called “ El Jito de Mati”, one of the plants grown in the experience are the Tomatoes due to the color, height and natural growing process of the plant is very visual. The system captures humidity, temperature and sunlight from different digital electronic sensors placed in the hort, this information is sent to a cloud-based app by internet in a Wi-Fi protocol, the system works anywhere there is internet access.