In-Situ Design and Development of a Socially Assistive Robot for Paediatric Rehabilitation

Abstract

We present the in-situ design and development of a general purpose social robot (NAO) as a therapeutic aid for paediatric rehabilitation. We describe our two-phase design approach, emphasising frequent patient/parent/therapist engagement and outline roles and requirements for our SAR prototype derived from this process. Our SAR prototype has now been deployed in the rehabilitation program of 9 patients with cerebral palsy, across 14 sessions where evaluation and iterative development is ongoing.