Sergio García-Vergara

Engaging Children in Play Therapy: The Coupling of Virtual Reality Games with Social Robotics

Individuals who have impairments in their motor skills typically engage in rehabilitation protocols to improve the recovery of their motor functions. In general, engaging in physical therapy can be tedious and difficult, which can result in demotivating the individual. This is especially true for children who are more susceptible to frustration. Thus, different virtual reality environments and play therapy systems have been developed with the goal of increasing the motivation of individuals engaged in physical therapy. However, although previously developed systems have proven to be effective for the general population, the majority of these systems are not focused on engaging children. Given this motivation, we discuss two technologies that have been shown to positively engage children who are undergoing physical therapy. The first is called the Super Pop VR™ game; a virtual reality environment that not only increases the child’s motivation to continue with his/her therapy exercises, but also provides feedback and tracking of patient performance during game play. The second technology integrates robotics into the virtual gaming scenario through social engagement in order to further maintain the child’s attention when engaged with the system. Results from preliminary studies with typically-developing children have shown their effectiveness. In this chapter, we discuss the functions and advantages of these technologies, and their potential for being integrated into the child’s intervention protocol.

Super Pop VRTM: An Adaptable Virtual Reality Game for Upper-Body Rehabilitation

Therapists and researchers have studied the importance of virtual reality (VR) environments in physical therapy interventions for people with different conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and cerebral palsy. Most of these VR systems do not integrate clinical assessment of outcome measures as an automated objective of the system. Moreover, these systems do not allow real-time adjustment of the system characteristics that is necessary to individualize the intervention. We discuss a new VR game designed to improve upper-arm motor function through repetitive arm exercises. An automated method is used to extract outcome measures of upper extremity movements using the Fugl-Meyer assessment methodology. The accuracy of the system was validated based on trials with eighteen adult subjects. With a corresponding average assessment error of less than 5%, the developed system shows to be a promising tool for therapists to use in individualizing the intervention for individuals with upper-body motor impairments.

Effect of a Home-Based Virtual Reality Intervention for Children with Cerebral Palsy Using Super Pop VR Evaluation Metrics: A Feasibility Study

Objective. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether Super Pop VR, a low-cost virtual reality (VR) system, was a feasible system for documenting improvement in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and whether a home-based VR intervention was effective. Methods. Three children with CP participated in this study and received an 8-week VR intervention (30 minutes × 5 sessions/week) using the commercial EyeToy Play VR system. Reaching kinematics measured by Super Pop VR and two fine motor tools (Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency second edition, BOT-2, and Pediatric Motor Activity Log, PMAL) were tested before, mid, and after intervention. Results. All children successfully completed the evaluations using the Super Pop VR system at home where 85% of the reaches collected were used to compute reaching kinematics, which is compatible with literature using expensive motion analysis systems. Only the child with hemiplegic CP and more impaired arm function improved the reaching kinematics and functional use of the affected hand after intervention. Conclusion. Super Pop VR proved to be a feasible evaluation tool in children with CP.

Effect of feedback from a socially interactive humanoid robot on reaching kinematics in children with and without cerebral palsy: A pilot study

ABSTRACT Purpose: To examine whether children with or without cerebral palsy (CP) would follow a humanoid robot’s (i.e., Darwin) feedback to move their arm faster when playing virtual reality (VR) games. Methods: Seven children with mild CP and 10 able-bodied children participated. Real-time reaching was evaluated by playing the Super Pop VRTM system, including 2-game baseline, 3-game acquisition, and another 2-game extinction. During acquisition, Darwin provided verbal feedback to direct the child to reach a kinematically defined target goal (i.e., 80% of average movement time in baseline). Outcome variables included the percentage of successful reaches (“% successful reaches”), movement time (MT), average speed, path, and number of movement units. Results: All games during acquisition and extinction had larger “%successful reaches,” faster speeds, and faster MTs than the 2 games during baseline (p < .05). Conclusion: Children with and without CP could follow the robot’s feedback for changing their reaching kinematics when playing VR games.

Evaluating the Effect of Robot Feedback on Motor Skill Performance in Therapy Games

For individuals with a motor skill disorder, repetition of recommended therapy exercises is essential for motor improvement. Moreover, external feedback of performance is an important component of therapy such that individuals can correct their exercises and improve their performance. However, direct feedback is typically only provided by an expert therapist during weekly or monthly therapy sessions, which limits improvement on a daily basis. In order to promote the repetition of recommended exercises in a home setting, several serious games have been developed to promote compliance with therapy interventions. To advance this work, we have developed a novel framework to couple serious games with a robot playmate that provides corrective feedback during interaction. The playmate continuously tracks the users kinematic performance and autonomously provides objective verbal and nonverbal cues in order to increase the efficacy of the intervention. To determine how various cues affect an individuals kinematic performance, we have tested the complete system with 20 able-bodied adults. Namely, we computed the total amount of time it took the participants to successfully complete a reaching task as a function of the verbal or nonverbal cues received. The results show that movement times improve at a faster rate for the group provided with both verbal and nonverbal feedback versus verbal feedback alone. Exit surveys also suggest that the system was deemed enjoyable by the targeted population.

Architectural Design and Support for Knowledge Sharing Across Heterogeneous MAST systems

A novel approach for the sharing of knowledge between widely heterogeneous robotic agents is presented, drawing upon Gardenfors Conceptual Spaces approach [4]. The target microrobotic platforms considered are computationally, power, sensor, and communications impoverished compared to more traditional robotics platforms due to their small size. This produces novel challenges for the system to converge on an interpretation of events within the world, in this case specifically focusing on the task of recognizing the concept of a biohazard in an indoor setting.

An infant smart-mobile system to encourage kicking movements in infants at-risk of cerebral palsy

Observations of spontaneous kicking patterns in infants have presented valuable insights into their development. At times, these kicking patterns can detect potential developmental delays in at-risk infants to help support diagnosis and intervention. However, the prevalence of developmental disabilities has increased and a protocol for early diagnosis is still not widely available outside of direct clinical observations. This paper presents a mobile system that aims at providing a prompt method for detecting atypical kicking patterns in at-risk infants. The Infant Smart-Mobile uses a robotic mobile coupled with wearable sensors for monitoring infant leg movements. We test the feasibility of the Infant Smart-Mobile by evaluating it with respect to data collected from a robotic humanoid designed to simulate kicking in a manner similar to that of infants with typical or atypical motor behavior.

Increasing Super Pop VR TM Users' Intrinsic Motivation by Improving the Game's Aesthetics

During physical therapy intervention protocols, it’s important to consider the individual’s intrinsic motivation to perform in-home recommended exercises. Physical therapy exercises can become tedious thus limiting the individual’s progress. Not only have researchers developed serious gaming systems to increase user motivation, but they have also worked on the design aesthetics since results have shown positive effects on the users’ performance for attractive models. As such, we improved the aesthetics of a previously developed serious game called Super Pop \(VR^{TM}\). Namely, we improved the game graphics, added new game features, and allowed for more game options to provide users the opportunity to tailor their own experience. The conducted user studies show that participants rank the version of the game with the improved aesthetics higher in terms of the amount of interest/enjoyment it generates, thus allowing for an increase in intrinsic motivation when interacting with the system.