Social Robot Augmented Telepresence For Remote Assessment And Rehabilitation Of Patients With Upper Extremity Impairment

With the shortage of rehabilitation clinicians in rural areas and elsewhere, remote rehabilitation (telerehab) fills an important gap in access to rehabilitation. We have developed a first of its kind social robot augmented telepresence (SRAT) system --- Flo --- which consists of a humanoid robot mounted onto a mobile telepresence base, with the goal of improving the quality of telerehab. The humanoid has arms, a torso, and a face to play games with and guide patients under the supervision of a remote clinician. To understand the usability of this system, we conducted a survey of hundreds of rehab clinicians. We found that therapists in the United States believe Flo would improve communication, patient motivation, and patient compliance, compared to traditional telepresence for rehab. Therapists highlighted the importance of high-quality video to enable telerehab with their patients and were positive about the usefulness of features which make up the Flo system for enabling telerehab. To compare telepresence interactions with vs without the social robot, we conducted controlled studies, the first to rigorously compare SRAT to classical telepresence (CT). We found that for many SRAT is more enjoyable than and preferred over CT. The results varied by age, motor function, and cognitive function, a novel result. To understand how therapists and patients respond to and use SRAT in the wild over long-term use, we deployed Flo at an elder care facility. Therapists used Flo with their own patients however they deemed best. They developed new ways to use the system and highlighted challenges they faced. To ease the load of performing assessments via telepresence, I constructed a pipeline to predict the motor function of patients using RGBD video of them doing activities via telepresence. The pipeline extracts poses from the video, calculates kinematic features and reachable workspace, and predicts level of impairment using a random forest of decision trees. Finally, I have aggregated our findings over all these studies and provide a path forward to continue the evolution of SRAT

Effort reduction and collision avoidance for powered wheelchairs : SCAD assistive mobility system

The new research described in this dissertation created systems and methods to assist wheelchair users and provide them with new realistic and interesting driving opportunities. The work also created and applied novel effort reduction and collision avoidance systems and some new electronic interactive devices. A Scanning Collision Avoidance Device (SCAD) was created that attached to standard powered wheelchairs to help prevent children from driving into things. Initially, mechanical bumpers were used but they made many wheelchairs unwieldy, so a novel system that rotated a single ultra-sonic transducer was created. The SCAD provided wheelchair guidance and assisted with steering. Optical side object detectors were included to cover blind spots and also assist with doorway navigation. A steering lockout mode was also included for training, which stopped the wheelchair from driving towards a detected object. Some drivers did not have sufficient manual dexterity to operate a reverse control. A reverse turn manoeuvring mode was added that applied a sequential reverse and turn function, enabling a driver to escape from a confined situation by operating a single turn control. A new generation of Proportional SCAD was created that operated with proportional control inputs rather than switches and new systems were created to reduce veer, including effort reduction systems. New variable switches were created that provided variable speed control in place of standard digital switches and all that research reduced the number of control actions required by a driver. Finally, some new systems were created to motivate individuals to try new activities. These included a track guided train and an adventure playground that including new interactive systems. The research was initially inspired by the needs of young people at Chailey Heritage, the novel systems provided new and more autonomous driving opportunities for many powered wheelchair users in less structured environments.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A Participatory Design Framework For Customisable Assistive Technology

High product costs and device abandonment negatively affect people with disabilities who require Assistive Technology (AT), and poor product design is a root cause. The purpose of this research is to develop and demonstrate a participatory design framework for customisable AT, which addresses the need for low-cost assistive products that satisfy a broad range of consumers’ needs. This framework addresses two main gaps in the literature. First, user involvement in the design process of medical and rehabilitative products helps create products that are more effective but, although methods to involve users exist, there are currently scant techniques to translate the research data into design solution concepts. Second, adaptive mass customisation offers a way to reduce a product’s cost by making it useful to more people and adaptable to a user’s changing needs. Although the creation of one-off, tailored AT devices is discussed in the literature, there are no methods to support the development of customisable or adaptable AT. Two-phases of participatory design research are described in the thesis, and make up the body of the design framework. First, a Delphi study is used to facilitate AT professionals working with individuals with disabilities in reaching a consensus on important design issues relating to a specific type of AT. An adapted morphological matrix is then presented as a novel way of applying the results of a Delphi study to concept generation. The second phase facilitates the involvement of AT users with disabilities in a series of participatory design workshops to create a final product design and prototype. The research approach was exploratory and Assistive Technology Computer Input Devices (ATCIDs) were employed as a sample technology domain to develop and substantiate the framework. Three key contributions resulted from this work; a wide range of problems and design issues related to ATCIDs; a method for using touch panel technology as a customisable ATCID; and, most pertinent due to its transferability, a participatory design framework for customisable AT with recommendations for participatory design practice involving individuals with diverse disabilities

Some problems of designing for augmentative and alternative communication users: an enquiry through practical design activity

The submission is concerned with, and addresses, problems of designing for people with disabilities, with specific reference to people who are illiterate and cannot speak. People with such disabilities often depend on electronic AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices for interpersonal communication. A central theme of the thesis, however, is that such products, and products intended for people with disabilities more generally, have characteristics that inadequately attend to users' needs. Through a combination of practical product development and literature reviews, the thesis demonstrates how improvements to AAC devices 'can be made through user-participatory, usercentred and more sensitive and perceptive design. Literature reviews in the following subjects are reported: AAC; the operational knowledge base for design and disability; user participatory design; and wearable computing. At the core of the thesis is the presentation and discussion of an empirical case study, carried out by the researcher, to design and develop the Portland Communication Aid (PCA). The PCA was conceived as an AAC product that would attempt to redress the inadequacies of predecessor devices. The design activity for the PCA is traced in the thesis, from initial concepts and development models through to a working prototype. Key ideas and essential principles of the design are illustrated. Throughout the work on the PCA, many problems associated with designing for people with severe communication disabilities were encountered. These problems, as with their resolutions, comprised matters of both designing (as an activity) and design (as product specification). The thesis contains comprehensive exposure and analysis of these problems and resolutions. In particular, the value of shaping meaning, metaphor, and other product semantics into devices intended for use by people with disabilities is explored. The study provides two substantive conclusions. First, that both the activity and the outcomes of Industrial Design have a valuable role in the empowerment and rehabilitation of AAC users. And second, that key principles have been identified that will enable designers to better identify, articulate and respond to the needs of people with communication disabilities (and the needs of people with disabilities more generally

Decloaking disability : images of disability and technology in science fiction media

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.This work examines how images of disability are used to frame cultural narratives regarding technology. As advances in biotechnology ensure that more people will be living with technological prosthetics against and beneath their skin, there is an increasing importance in examining how such bodies challenge traditional cultural attitudes regarding identity and non-normative bodies. This work uses a cultural studies approach to explore the intersections between disability and technology. Additionally, memoir is often included to illustrate some of the complexities regarding how experiences with disability and technological prosthetics can influence aspects of identity. Like disability, technology is often framed in gothic terms of lack or excess, and thus a discussion of the "techno-gothic" also features in this work. Furthermore, such a discussion is also relevant to seemingly unrelated modes of characterizing the other, such as the archetype of the cyborg, the queer body, or the formation of non-traditional social groups, even to images of the city as urban ruin.(cont.) This work demonstrates that, while images of disability rarely inform us about the everyday experience of disability, they can inform us about how technology frames non-normative bodies as either "less than" or "more than" human, and how the tropes and language associated with disability is often used to characterize technology itself.by Alicia "Kestrell" Verlager.S.M

The Use of Socially Assistive Robots with Autistic Children

The use of socially assistive robots (SARs) appears to facilitate learning, social and communication, and collaborative play in autistic children, though rigorous research to drive translation into everyday practice is limited. This thesis, comprised of four studies, was aimed at providing a comprehesive overview of how SARs have been used with young autistic people, to identify the factors that might encourage their future use, and to consider the scope of SAR benefit for autistic youth via secondary data analysis from a specific SAR support programme. The first chapters provide an overview of autism, theories, and models, and the available psychosocial support for autistic children and their families as per current practice. Within this, the different SARs types used in autism research are described followed by an outiline of the rationale for each study design methodology to address the aims of this thesis. Chapter 4 presents an up-to-date evidence summary of the nature of SARs research in autism reporting that robot-mediated support has predominantly been administered in autism clinics/centers with benefits in the social and communication skills of autistic children. Chapter 5 explores parents’/carers’ knowledge and preferences about the use of smartphones, iPods, tablets, virtual reality, robots or other technologies to support the specific needs/interests of autistic children offering guidance on how to extend the benefits of the systematic review findings. The online survey reported that 59% of parents/carers mostly preferred a tablet, followed by virtual reality and then robots that were the least preferred technologies due to being immersive, unrealistic or an unknown technology. To delve deeper into parent views about SARs, chapter 6 provides data from 12 individual interviews and one focus group with parents of autistic children. Parents were receptive to the use of a robot-mediated support acknowledging that the predictability, consistency and scaffolding of robots might facilitate learning in autism. Independent living skills and social and communication skills were the two domains of focus in future robot-mediated support with autistic children. Such a finding indicates that there may be scope to extent robots in the autism community. The final data analysed in chapter 7 draws on ten video recordings of autistic children exploring the effect of triadic robot-mediated support with a human therapist alongside a humanoid robot, called Kaspar, compared to a dyadic interaction with a human therapist alone on the development of children’s joint attention skills. Retrospective data analysis here showed no statistically significant difference in the joint attention skills of autistic children in the human therapist compared to the robot-mediated group nor in their skills from the first to the last session in either group. A statistically significant difference was observed on the requests for social games which improved from the first to the last session in the human therapist group. This study highlights the challenges SARs research facing to evidence demonstrable impact on everyday life skills as a driver of parent and child buy-in to this type of support. Taken together, the studies in this thesis suggest that SARs have a role in autism support, mainly in social and communication domains. Parents/carers have valid reasons for preferring other types of technology support though when asked to think about SARs, they do acknowledge ways in which robots may be advantegous. Existing data and secondary analysis reported that rigour in reporting the way that SARs may benefit skills development is needed and that life skills impact may be difficult to assess over a short-term period. To take SARs research forward, it is imperative to deepen partenships with autism stakeholders to ensure fit for purpose skills selection, measurement of impact, and take up of support to expand benefit

A professional agenda: An initial step toward enhancing the quality of teaching in University Malaysia Sarawak.

This paper was originally written as a proposal to the management of the Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in the bid to enhance the quality of teaching on a university-wide basis. The recent quality assurance movement on teaching in UNIMAS is an important step to foster excellence in teaching and to eventually meet one of Malaysia’s visions of being a center for quality education by year 2020. Although teaching is one of the core businesses in institutions of higher learning, it is ironic that academics in many universities are not required to possess preparatory training in teaching, unlike schoolteachers. As a forwardlooking university, one of the initial mechanisms suggested in this paper is to conduct a workshop series to all UNIMAS academics. The workshop series comprise topics such as Introduction to University Teaching, How Humans Learn? Assessment, Instructional Design, Instructional Technology, and Learning from the Teaching Practice. The aims of the workshop series are to train the UNIMAS academics in teaching on a short-term basis, to initiate a long-term commitment toward excellence in teaching, and to develop a collaborative academic community that places special commitment to excellence in teaching. The required institutional commitment, the success factors, and the long-term plans for enhancing teaching at UNIMAS are also discussed in this paper