Hands-Off Therapist Robot Behavior Adaptation to User Personality for Post-Stroke Rehabilitation Therapy

This paper describes a hands-off therapist robot that monitors, assists, encourages, and socially interacts with post-stroke users in the process of rehabilitation exercises. We developed a behavior adaptation system that takes advantage of the users introversion-extroversion personality trait and the number of exercises performed in order to adjust its social interaction parameters (e.g., interaction distances/proxemics, speed, and vocal content) toward a customized post-stroke rehabilitation therapy. The experimental results demonstrate the robot's autonomous behavior adaptation to the user's personality and the resulting user improvements of the exercise task performance

Encouraging User Autonomy through Robot-Mediated Intervention

In this paper, we focus on the question of promoting user autonomy at a healthcare task. During a robot-mediated intervention, socially assistive robot should seek to encourage users to learn skills and behaviors that will generalize and persist beyond the duration of the intervention. Treating a care-receiver as an apprentice rather than a dependent results in greater proficiency at self-management [2]. This philosophy must be incorporated into the design and implementation of robot-mediated healthcare interventions in order for them to be accepted by real-world users. Our approach toward encouraging user autonomy and promoting generalized skill learning was to model the occupational therapy technique of graded cueing [1]. Graded cueing involves giving a patient the minimum required feedback while guiding them through a task. This method promotes generalized skill learnin

Socially assistive robotics for post-stroke rehabilitation

BACKGROUND: Although there is a great deal of success in rehabilitative robotics applied to patient recovery post stroke, most of the research to date has dealt with providing physical assistance. However, new rehabilitation studies support the theory that not all therapy need be hands-on. We describe a new area, called socially assistive robotics, that focuses on non-contact patient/user assistance. We demonstrate the approach with an implemented and tested post-stroke recovery robot and discuss its potential for effectiveness. RESULTS: We describe a pilot study involving an autonomous assistive mobile robot that aids stroke patient rehabilitation by providing monitoring, encouragement, and reminders. The robot navigates autonomously, monitors the patient's arm activity, and helps the patient remember to follow a rehabilitation program. We also show preliminary results from a follow-up study that focused on the role of robot physical embodiment in a rehabilitation context. CONCLUSION: We outline and discuss future experimental designs and factors toward the development of effective socially assistive post-stroke rehabilitation robots

A brief review of robotics technologies to support social interventions for older users

In the last few decades, various studies demonstrated numerous robotics applications that can tackle the problem of the ageing population by supporting older people to live longer and independently at home. This article reviews the scientific literature and highlights how social robots can help the daily life of older people and be useful also as assessment tools for mild physical and mental conditions. It will underline the aspects of usability and acceptability of robotic solutions for older persons. Indeed, the design should maximise these to improve the users' attitude towards the actual use of the robots. The article discusses the advantages and concerns about the use of robotics technology in the social context with a vulnerable population. In this field, success is to assist social workers, not to replace them. We conclude recommending that care benefits should be balanced against ethical costs