PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN

Saturday, February 17, 2024; Grand opening of Studio 525, Louis Stokes wing of the Cleveland Public Library’s Main Library, 525 Superior Avenue, 1^st Floor: Marta Kilmer, age 5, receives assistance from Case Western Reserve University Computer Science graduate students Haoen Lu and Tina Xu in playing the Choo Choo Zoo video game. The CWRU grad students participated in the design of the game in a class with CWRU Professor Michael Fu. The game is designed to help children with disabilities to develop their cognitive skills and motor skills.

CWRU grad students introduce Choo Choo Zoo at Studio 525

by Chuck Hoven

   (Plain Press March 2024) One of the video games featured at the grand opening of the new tech space for teens, Studio 525, is a video game called Choo Choo Zoo.

   The game, designed by Computer Science graduate students in Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Professor Michael Fu’s class, helps children with developmental disabilities to improve their cognitive and motor skills.

   Two graduate students, Tina Xu and Haoen Lu, attended the grand opening of Studio 525 to demonstrate how Choo Choo Zoo works. With the help of Xu and Lu, five-year-old Marta Kilmer of Lyndhurst, Ohio tried out the video game. She sat in a toy jeep equipped with a large arrow, a steering wheel, and other means to interact with zoo animals in the video game which appear on a small screen in the front of the jeep as well as on a large screen on the wall.

   Professor Fu said he is collaborating in research efforts with Professor Cole Galloway, and Dr. James Sulzer and they are seeking funding from a National Institute of Health grant to continue the work to help people with cognitive and motor disabilities which may result from a developmental disability, a traumatic brain injury, a stroke, or cerebral palsy.

   Professor Fu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at CWRU. He also serves as a Research Scientist at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center. Professor Fu serves as an Investigator at the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center. The Cleveland FES Center is a consortium of five institutional partners: the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, MetroHealth Medical Center, CWRU, University Hospitals and Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute.

   Professor Fu says Professor Galloway did research at the University of Delaware to develop cars for children with disabilities that operate with buttons. The program Professor Galloway founded is called “Go Baby Go.” According to its website it is “a program that provides modified, ride-on cars to young children with disabilities so they can move around independently.” Professor Fu says Galloway is now in Cleveland working remotely for Baylor University.

   The other collaborator in the research, Dr. James Sulzer, is Staff Scientist at the MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Case Western Reserve University.  Dr. Sulzer also works as an investigator with the Advanced Platform Technology Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Administration Medical Center.

   Professor Fu noted that Dr. Sulzer has experience he learned as a caretaker for one of his children who suffered a traumatic brain injury and applies it to his research. Dr. Sulzer’s lab, the Rehabilitation with Insight from Robotics and Engineering (Rewire) Lab, works collaboratively with Professor Fu and Professor Galloway.

   Members of the CWRU computer class also volunteer with a group called RePlay for Kids whose mission is to “increase the availability of toys and assistive devices for children with disabilities.”  The RePlay for Kids website says, “We repair, adapt and distribute toys and assistive devices free of charge.”

   Professor Fu says the invitation to bring the Choo Choo Zoo video game to the Studio 525 Grand Opening, came from Tristan Wheeler, a Games Culture Advocate and Creative Technology Engineer at the Cleveland Public Library, who served as a judge for the various video games created by students in Professor Fu’s graduate Computer Class.