Look at Them Go! Using an Autonomous Assistive GoBot to Encourage Movement Practice by Two Children with Motor Disabilities
Ameer Helmi, Tze-Hsuan Wang, Samuel W. Logan, Naomi T. Fitter
AI summary
Problem
Pediatric body-weight support harnesses help children practice walking but often lack engaging motivators to sustain long-term movement practice, and few studies have explored fully autonomous robots to address this gap.
Approach
The researchers conducted a six-month single-case study with two children using a custom autonomous robot that moved around and used sensory rewards to encourage them to move while wearing a body-weight support harness.
Key results
- Increased overground movement during robot-active sessions
- Higher parent-rated engagement during robot-assisted sessions
- Sustained motivation for stepping and mobility practice over six months
- Successful adaptation of customizable sensory rewards to individual participants
Why it matters
This work demonstrates the potential of autonomous assistive robots to enhance pediatric rehabilitation outcomes, offering practical insights for roboticists and clinical researchers.
Abstract
Young children with motor disabilities face barriers and delays to learning motor skills such as walking. Pediatric body-weight support harness systems (BWSHes) are a newer technology for helping young children to practice supported motor skills. Incorporating an assistive robot to mediate BWSH interventions can support further child motion and engagement, but almost no work to date has studied autonomous robot- mediated BWSH use. We conducted a six-month-long single-case study series with two participants to evaluate the effectiveness of an autonomous assistive robot in motivating the children to move and stay engaged while in the BWSH. We collected and analyzed objective movement data and self-reported parent survey data to determine how much the child moved and stayed engaged during sessions. Our results showed that both children displayed more movement while the assistive robot was active (relative to in prior no-robot periods). Parents also rated their children as more engaged while the assistive robot was present. An autonomous assistive robot may provide motivation for a child to move and stay engaged while using a pediatric rehabilitation aid such as a BWSH. The products of this work can benefit roboticists who work with children with disabilities and researchers who use pediatric rehabilitation technologies.