Corey Guerra says finding an activity his son enjoyed was a challenge at first. Corey's son Luke is on the spectrum.

"A lot of times with kids on the spectrum, emotional, whether it's anxiety, whether it's social stuff, whether it's just sensory issues, it's hard to kind of participate in other activities," Guerra said.

A new robotics program at the HMEA Autism Resource Center helped Luke find his passion.

"I guess maybe the building process and seeing the finished product," Luke said when asked what he likes about building things.

The children and their parents took part in a five-week course to build and program a robot called M-Bot from a do-it-yourself mechanical building blocks robot kit. With help from WPI, participants and their parents learn to program and code different robots. Staff from WPI and volunteers from the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science at WPI help facilitate the groups virtually.

Luke said, "It might get hard to do, but once you get it in, it's easy."

A grant from the Saint Gobain Corporation Foundation is helping children and young adults like Luke learn social skills and hands-on working skills.

HMEA's Autism Activities Coordinator Cid Deleo said, "We're trying to bring all of this together so that the kids can learn there is things they can do."

There are multiple groups, some focusing on entry level activities while other are more advanced and difficult. HMEA says the hope is to help kids like Luke in the next phase of their lives.

"You might have some kids who look at high school and that's it, schooling's done, I'm done at high school. But allowing this goes, 'Okay, well, here's what you can do after that.'"