The Transporters

An award-winning series helping autistic children recognise facial expressions and understand the emotions behind them.

How does it work?

Many autistic children love predictability. The Transporters was designed to harness this love of predictability by making all the characters in the episodes vehicles that move in a predictable way, such as trains, trams and cable cars that move along tracks. Each vehicle has a real human face, which moves in a life-like way showing a range of human emotions.

The Transporters was nominated for a prestigious Learning Primary BAFTA award in 2007, and won the Association of Electronic Publishers’ Distinguished Achievement Award for Special Education Preschool in 2010.

What’s included?

15 animated episodes: Engaging stories that cover 15 key emotions.
The resource bundle: A collection of video clips, images, group and one-to-one activities, cloze exercises, and reward materials designed to extend the use of The Transporters series.
User guide: A booklet explaining how you can make the best use of these resources.

Why it works

Predictable environments: Helps children feel safe and focused.

Real expressions: Uses actual human actors, not cartoons, to show examples of real human emotions.

Fully evaluated: Our research has shown that after watching The Transporters for just 15 minutes per day for one month, autistic children improve significantly in their emotion recognition ability.