Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) currently affect a significant percentage of the worldwide population. The potential of computerised therapy tools, in particular the use of 3D virtual environments, for ASDs is well known. However, the development of such tools is expensive and time-consuming, and is language and culture specific. The aim of this thesis is to develop a generic 3D virtual environment development platform for ASD therapy tools that intends to alleviate these problems.
The design of the platform is based on known game engine designs, but adapted for the requirements of ASD therapy tools. It supports standard features such as 3D rendering, animation and audio output. Specific features, aimed at ASD therapy tools and educational games, included in our engine are: replays, data capturing, remote monitoring over a network and language localisation. We also implemented an input hardware abstraction layer to allow support for non-standard input peripherals in the future, without modifying existing game implementations. Furthermore, to separate the development of games and tools from the engine, we include wrapper libraries in our engine for Lua and Java.
We successfully developed our engine and implemented a number of prototype therapy tools and educational games. These implementations confirmed that the engine works as expected. Some of these programs are currently in use at a local primary school.
Morné Chamberlain began his studies at Stellenbosch University in 2004. He obtained his BSc degree in 2006 and his HonsBSc degree in Computer Science in 2007. He has been an MSc Computer Science student since 2008.