NAOTherapist: autonomous assistance of physical rehabilitation therapies with a social humanoid robot

Abstract

The main goal of NAOTherapist is to provide a social robot with enough autonomy to carry out a non-contact upper-limb rehabilitation therapy for patients with physical impairments, such as cerebral palsy and obstetric brachial plexus palsy. Our robotic system is focused on pediatric patients aiming to increase their motivation and engagement with the treatment. The robot shows a set of prescribed exercises and the patient has to repeat them correctly by imitation. The rehabilitation tool supervises and gives a set of clues and correction mechanisms to help them during the training. The system has been initially evaluated with a large number of healthy children, a first experience of 3 pediatric patients and a long-term evaluation with 8 patients during 4 months.