Proof of Concept
NAOTherapist: Autonomous Assistance of Physical Rehabilitation Therapies with a Social Humanoid Robot
Pulido J C, Gonzalez J C & Fernandez F
Proceedings of IWART 2016: International Workshop on Assistive and Rehabilitation Technologies, Elche, Spain, December 14 – 16, 2016
Objective: The goal of this work is to identify the architecture needed for NAO to provide therapy without human supervision.
Discussion: Social robots may act to relieve the workload of the therapist, fulfilling the clinical objectives autonomously over many treatment sessions. In this study, early requirements of a robotic therapist have been previously identified: the children had no problem following the instructions; they enjoyed the activity and adhered to the regimen.
For autonomous therapy, the robot must possess social awareness in addition to offering exercises that it models, monitors, encourages and corrects. It should be able to report back results to the therapist. In this case, NAO is doing successive arm poses with the child. The robot greets the child. It then models each arm pose, checks on the position achieved by the child, encourages and corrects the pose by using a variety of strategies to model the pose and to show how move into that pose. NAO times the correct achievement of the pose. Here, Kinect is being used separately to capture the poses for feedback to the therapist. NAO indicates the completion of each pose and the exercise routine and offers a wish to "play again tomorrow".