THERAPIST: Towards an autonomous socially interactive robot for motor and neurorehabilitation therapies for children

Exploiting the use-dependent plasticity of our neuromuscular system, neuro-rehabilitation therapies are devised to help patients that suffer from injuries or diseases in this system, such as those caused by brain damage before or during birth or in the first years of life (e.g. due to cerebral palsy or obstetric brachial plexus palsy). These therapies take advantage of the fact that the motor activity alters the properties of our neurons and muscles, including the pattern of their connectivity, and thus their functionality. Hence, a sensor-motor treatment where the patient makes certain movements, will help her to (re)learn how to move the affected body parts. But this traditional rehabilitation processes come at a cost: therapies are usually repetitive and lengthy, reducing motivation and adherence to the treatment and thus limiting the benefits for the patients. This paper describes the motivation, experiences and current efforts towards the final development of THERAPIST, a socially interactive robot for neuro-rehabilitation assistance. Our starting hypothesis was that patients could get consistently engaged in a therapeutic non-physical interaction with a robot, facilitating the design of new therapies that should improve the patient recovery time and reduce the overall socio-economic costs. This hypothesis was validated by our initial experimental studies, which showed that pediatric patients can be easily driven into highly attentive and collaborating attitudes by letting them interact with a robot. However, in order to be safe and robust, this robot was teleoperated, requiring a great effort on supervision from clinic professionals. The development of a real socially interactive robot will require the intersection of multiple challenging directions of research that we are currently exploring.