Rahmahtrisilvia, Yoga Hadia Sukma, Risca Amani, Elsa Efrina, Rudi Setiawan, Johandri Taufan, Safaruddin, Arisul Mahdi, Zulmiyetri, Gaby Arnez, Setia Budi, Ediyanto
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to show changes and expressions of emotion by throwing tantrums such as crying, screaming, hitting, self-harming, and even harming others. The impact of these tantrum behaviors can be detrimental to both ASD and non-ASD children if not properly anticipated. This study aims to develop the EmoPulse-A design as a solution for detecting emotional changes in children with ASD. These emotional changes are measured through the child's heart rate. This study is a development study using the Design-Based Research (DBR) approach. The DBR study involves four stages: problem analysis to understand the condition of emotional changes in children with ASD and the preventive measures taken by teachers, solution design to create an assistive device as a solution to the identified problem, validation testing to assess the validity of the designed device, and evaluation to reflect on the results of expert validation. Data collection techniques include observation, interviews, and questionnaires. The validators involved are electronics experts, computer science experts, special education experts, classroom teachers, and biomedical engineering experts. The subjects identified are GSA children. The research results show that the validation of the EmoPulse-A design obtained was 81.82% from electronics experts, 81.82% from computer science experts, 64.29% from special education teachers, 92.86% from special education experts, and 70.37% from biomedical engineering experts. Thus, the total validation test results from the five experts were 78.65%. Based on these research results, it can be concluded that EmoPulse-A is considered valid and can detect increased heart rate as a symptom of tantrums in GSA children; however, further improvements are needed to ensure optimal use. © 2026 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved.
Universitas Negeri Padang, Padang, Indonesia; Institut Teknologi Sumatera, Lampung, Indonesia; Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang, Indonesia
