Look at Them Go! Using an Autonomous Assistive GoBot to Encourage Movement Practice by Two Children With Motor Disabilities

Young children with motor disabilities face barriers and delays to learning motor skills such as walking. Pediatric body-weight support harness systems (BWSHes) are a newer technology for helping young children to practice supported motor skills. Incorporating an assistive robot to mediate BWSH interventions can support further child motion and engagement, but almost no work to date has studied autonomous robot-mediated BWSH use. We conducted a six-month-long single-case study series with two participants to evaluate the effectiveness of an autonomous assistive robot in motivating the children to move and stay engaged while in the BWSH. We collected and analyzed objective movement data and self-reported parent survey data to determine how much the child moved and stayed engaged during sessions. Our results showed that both children displayed more movement while the assistive robot was active (relative to in prior no-robot periods). Parents also rated their children as more engaged while the assistive robot was present. An autonomous assistive robot may provide motivation for a child to move and stay engaged while using a pediatric rehabilitation aid such as a BWSH. The products of this work can benefit roboticists who work with children with disabilities and researchers who use pediatric rehabilitation technologies.