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

在美国，《残疾人教育法》（IDEA）规定，有身体残疾的儿童有权接受“免费的适当的公共教育，强调特殊教育和相关服务，以满足他们的独特需求，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仍然不平等，身体残疾和运动障碍儿童在很大程度上被忽视。然而，最近商业机器人的成功似乎预示着机器人在残疾人身上应用的爆炸式增长。机器人不仅可以协助日常生活活动（ADL），还可以帮助个人进行康复练习，这样治疗师和家庭成员就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。尽管用于康复的机器人系统通常可以用于记录主动运动期间的运动表现信息，但这些系统对于儿童的康复来说并不理想。这给为这一目标人群部署此类机器人设备带来了独特的挑战。为了克服这一障碍，必须创造最先进的技术来促进机器人在儿童康复治疗中发挥作用所必需的相互作用。基于这样一个事实，从逻辑上讲，动画玩具自然地吸引儿童，这个项目的目标是融合游戏和康复技术，使用机器人设计来诱导儿童与机器人的互动，这将是有趣的，同时对儿童康复也有效。在这项提议的工作中，重要的是允许治疗师在康复任务中向机器人提供指导，这些任务可以重新映射到特定于单个孩子的游戏行为。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，唤起孩子的相应行为。主要的研究问题是：(1)如何最有效地评估儿童的游戏行为并与辅助机器人共享；(2)如何捕获这些知识并将其概括为对康复有用的行为；(3)什么是最有效的机器人接口，可以将这些行为传达给治疗师进行评估和儿童指导运动。智力优势：本研究的目的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来进一步发展儿童康复技术，以改善儿童康复。本研究的一个主要目标是研究如何通过机器人观察来评估上肢和/或下肢的身体运动，以及如何对不同的康复练习进行重新编码，以允许治疗师指导游戏行为的映射。重点是利用以人为本的能力，使机器人能够协助康复训练，这是一种越来越需要的能力，特别是考虑到在几乎任何家庭环境中都能安全、持续地进行日常治疗活动的愿望。更广泛的影响：建立在以人为本的观察技术基础上的框架的成功开发，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。在为脑瘫儿童提供援助方面，将强调这种方法的重要性，但这种努力的结果可以为为不同残疾儿童提供类似的努力奠定基础。pi计划将这些方法整合到机器人和软件工程课程中。此外，该教育计划将把其中的许多想法纳入一个“训练营”讲习班，为代表性不足的学生提供服务。大学生研究项目和中学生示范有望激励和鼓励下一代工程师和科学家，使他们适应一个新的机器人集成世界。

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.