A system for speech and language therapy with a potential to work in the IoT

Abstract

In this study we propose a designed, developed and validated by experiments Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) system to provide SLT intervention for children with communication disorders. In order to help the SLT services in different educational and social context, the system has a potential to work in the Internet of Things (IoT). It can wire different assistive devices, APIs, online services and agents in order to meet the child individual needs for the intervention. Humanoid NAO-type robot, Emotiv EPOC+ brain headset, emotionally-expressive robot EmoSan and Kinect depth sensor are the devices connected using Node-RED. It is a flow-based tool designed for visual programming without a need to write any code and it can run locally or in the IoT. The proposed system is sufficiently general to be applied for other kind of therapy and to support other assistive technologies, cloud services and people in the remote areas.