1) The Problem

Many children with autism can use art for therapeutic and educational purposes. However, many of these children lack the fine motor skills required to manipulate a drawing utensil such as a pencil or pen. In the month of February, a teacher who works with such children in her school came to our Robot Mechanism Design asking if we could think of a design that would allow the limited movements of her more impaired students to be translated to more significant movements that can be used to make art.