NRI-Small: Robot Movement for Patient Improvement - Therapeutic Rehabilitation for Children with Disabilities

NRI-Small：机器人运动促进患者改善 - 残疾儿童的治疗康复

• 批准号: 1208287
• 负责人: Ayanna Howard
• 金额: $ 63.25万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-10-01 至 2016-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1208287&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NRI; Small; Robot; Movement; Patient

In the United States, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that children with a physical disability are entitled to a "free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living." Unfortunately, access to necessary assistive robotic technology remains unequal and children with physical disabilities and movement disorders are largely overlooked. However, recent successes in commercial robots appear to foreshadow an explosion of promising robotic applications for individuals with disabilities. Not only can robots be tasked to assist with Activities of Daily Living (ADL) but they can also help individuals through rehabilitation exercises such that therapists and family members can provide assistance in other arenas. The major barrier is that, to date, most assistive robotic devices are not designed for children. And although robotic systems for rehabilitation can generally be used to record information about motor performance during active movements, these systems are not ideal for rehabilitation with respect to children. This causes a unique challenge for deploying such robotic devcies for this target demographic.To overcome this barrier, state-of-the-art techniques must be created to facilitate the interaction necessary for robots to be useful for therapeutic rehabilitation with respect to children. Based on the fact that logically, animate playthings naturally engage children, the goal of this project is to fuse play and rehabilitation techniques using a robotic design to induce childrobot interaction that will be entertaining as well as effective for pediatric rehabilitation. Of importance within this proposed work are approaches that allow therapists to provide instruction to robots on rehabilitation tasks that can be remapped to play behaviors specific to the individual child. In addition, robots must have internal perception and inference algorithms that allow them to learn new play behaviors and incorporate them to evoke corresponding behaviors in the child.Major research questions are (1) How can child play behavior most effectively be assessed and shared with an assistive robot, (2) How can this knowledge be captured and generalized into behaviors useful for rehabilitation and (3) What are the most effective robot interfaces for communicating these behaviors both to the therapist for evaluation and the child for directing movement.Intellectual Merit: The objective of this research effort is to further rehabilitation techniques for children by developing and validating the core technologies needed to integrate therapy instruction with child-robot play interaction in order to improve pediatric rehabilitation. A principal goal of the research endeavor is to examine how evaluation of upper and/or lower limb body movement can be achieved through robot observation and how different rehabilitation exercises can be recoded to allow the mapping of therapist instruction to play behaviors. The focus is on using human-centered capabilities to enable robots to assist in rehabilitation exercises, an ability that is increasingly needed, especially given the desire to have daily therapeutic activities performed safely and consistently in almost any home environment.Broader Impact: The successful development of a framework that builds upon proven human-centered observation techniques has the ability to tremendously increase the capabilities of robots that interact with children in a safe and effective manner. The significance of the approach will be emphasized in terms of providing assistance for children with cerebral palsy, but the results of this effort could lay the basis for similar efforts for children with varying disabilities. The PIs plan to incorporate these approaches into courses designed for robotics and software engineering. In addition, the education plan will incorporate many of these ideas into a "boot-camp" workshop for underrepresented students. Undergraduate research projects and demonstrations to middle-school students are anticipated to inspire and encourage the next generation of engineers and scientists and acclimate them into a new robot-integrated world.

在美国，《残疾人教育法》(IDEA)规定，肢体残疾儿童有权享受“免费、适当的公共教育，强调特殊教育和相关服务，以满足他们的独特需求，并为他们的进一步教育、就业和独立生活做好准备。”不幸的是，获得必要的辅助机器人技术的机会仍然不平等，肢体残疾和运动障碍的儿童在很大程度上被忽视。然而，最近在商业机器人方面的成功似乎预示着面向残疾人的有前途的机器人应用将出现爆炸性增长。机器人不仅可以协助日常生活活动(ADL)，而且还可以通过康复练习帮助个人，以便治疗师和家庭成员可以在其他领域提供帮助。主要的障碍是，到目前为止，大多数辅助机器人设备都不是为儿童设计的。尽管康复机器人系统通常可以用来记录活跃运动中的运动表现信息，但对于儿童的康复来说，这些系统并不理想。为了克服这一障碍，必须创造最先进的技术，以促进机器人对儿童的治疗康复所必需的互动。基于这样一个事实，从逻辑上讲，动画玩具自然会吸引儿童，该项目的目标是使用机器人设计将游戏和康复技术融合在一起，以诱导儿童机器人互动，这将是有趣的，也是有效的儿科康复。在这项拟议的工作中，重要的是允许治疗师向机器人提供康复任务的指导，这些任务可以重新映射到玩特定于单个儿童的行为。此外，机器人必须有内部感知和推理算法，使它们能够学习新的游戏行为，并将它们结合起来，以唤起儿童的相应行为。主要研究问题是(1)如何最有效地评估儿童游戏行为并与辅助机器人分享，(2)如何将这些知识捕获并概括为对康复有用的行为，以及(3)将这些行为传达给治疗师进行评估和儿童指导运动的最有效的机器人接口是什么。智力价值：本研究的目标是通过开发和验证将治疗指导与儿童-机器人游戏互动相结合所需的核心技术，进一步促进儿童康复技术，以改善儿科康复。这项研究的一个主要目标是研究如何通过机器人观察来实现对上肢和/或下肢身体运动的评估，以及如何重新编码不同的康复练习，以允许将治疗师的指令映射到游戏行为。重点是利用以人为中心的能力使机器人能够协助康复练习，这一能力越来越需要，特别是考虑到希望在几乎任何家庭环境中安全一致地进行日常治疗活动的愿望。广泛影响：成功开发一个建立在经过验证的以人为中心的观察技术基础上的框架，能够极大地提高机器人以安全有效的方式与儿童互动的能力。将强调这一方法在为脑瘫儿童提供援助方面的重要性，但这一努力的结果可能为为不同残疾儿童开展类似努力奠定基础。PI计划将这些方法纳入为机器人和软件工程设计的课程中。此外，教育计划将把这些想法中的许多纳入一个为代表不足的学生举办的“新兵训练营”研讨会。本科生研究项目和中学生示范预计将激励和鼓励下一代工程师和科学家，并让他们适应一个新的机器人集成世界。