Pilot study
Robots in Rehab: Towards socially assistive robots for paediatric rehabilitation
McMarthy C, Butchart J, George M, Kerr D, Kingsley H, Scheinberg A M & Sterling L
OzCHI '15 Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction, pp. 39-43
Link to abstract: dx.doi.org/10.1145/2838739.2838791
Objective: What are the possible clinical benefits of social robots in rehabilitation for children? This preliminary study explores the characteristics required of robots which interact with children in a post-surgery inpatient setting.
Process: In this setting, NAO robot was used to mimic exercises and motivate children when the therapist was not present. Children had two sessions weekly with a therapist, followed by a third session with NAO, over a period of five months. NAO speaks and demonstrates each exercise, provides a focus during the exercises to minimize boredom, provides encouraging and rewarding vocalizations and records the child’s activity for later review.
Findings: Outcomes of interest are specific to the characteristics of the device. Issues that detracted from NAO’s functionality were movement and speech slowness, physical stability and limited balance, voice clarity and battery life.