No abstract

Development of children's cognitive and perceptual skills depends heavily on object exploration and experience in their physical world. For children who have severe physical impairments, one of the biggest concerns is the loss of opportunities for meaningful play with objects, including physical contact and manipulation. Assistive robots can enable children to perform object manipulation through the control of simple interfaces. Touch sensations conveyed through haptic interfaces in the form of force reflection or force assistance can help a child to sense the environment and to control a robot. A robotic system with forbidden region virtual fixtures (VFs) was tested in an object sorting task. Three sorting tasks-by color, by shape, and by both color and shape-were performed by 10 adults without disability and one adult with cerebral palsy. Tasks performed with VFs were accomplished faster than tasks performed without VFs, and deviations of the motion area were smaller with VFs than without VFs. For the participant with physical impairments, two out of three tasks were slower with the VFs. This implies that forbidden region VFs are not always able to improve user task performance. Alignment with an individual's unique motion characteristics can improve VF assistance.

This paper presents a novel application of an assistive robotic system with virtual assistance to enhance manual performance of individuals with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy affects one's voluntary motor movements resulting in limited opportunities to actively engage in physical manipulative activities that require fine motor movements and coordination. Lack of object manipulation and environmental exploration can result in further impairments such as cognitive and social delays. The proposed assistive robotic system has been developed to enhance hand movements of people with disabilities when performing a functional task colouring. This paper presents the usability testing of the effectiveness of the developed system with an individual with cerebral palsy in a set of colouring tasks. Assisted and unassisted approaches were compared and analysed through quantitative and qualitative measures. The robotic-based approach was further compared with the participant's typical alternate access method to perform the same proposed tasks. The robotic system with virtual assistance was clinically validated to be significantly more effective, compared to both unassisted and typical approaches, by increasing the hand controllability, reducing the physical load and increasing the easiness of maintaining movements within the lines. Future studies will inform the use of the system for children with disabilities to provide them with assisted play for functional and playful activities. Implications for rehabilitation Robotic system can enhance manual performance in individuals with disabilities. Participating in a robot-mediated play activity could increase children's motivation and engagement. The developed robotic system can contribute to a basis for clinical and home-based implementation of the technology to promote manual play activities for children with disabilities.

DISABLING IMAGES AND THE DANGERS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTION: A COMMENTARY ON THE MEDIA’S "COVERAGE" OF THE LATIMER CASE

In this paper, the design and implementation of a new telerobotics-assisted platform is proposed for individuals who have cerebral palsy (CP). The main objective of the proposed assistive system is to modulate capabilities of individuals through the proposed telerobotic medium and to enhance their control over interaction with objects in a real physical environment. The proposed platform is motivated by evidence showing that lack of interaction with real environments can develop further secondary sensorimotor and cognitive issues for people who grow up with CP. The proposed telerobotic system assists individuals by (a) mapping their limited but convenient motion range to a larger workspace needed for task performance in the real environment, (b) transferring only the voluntary components of the hand motion to the task-side robot to perform tasks and (c) kinaesthetically dissipating the energy of their involuntary motions using a viscous force field implemented in high frequency domain. Consequently, using the proposed system, an individual who has CP will be capable of providing smooth and large-scale motions and presenting enhanced coordination while performing tasks, even if they naturally have involuntary movements, limited range of motion and/or coordination deficits. The proposed architecture is implemented and initially tested for one nondisabled participant. Afterwards, the system is evaluated for one individual who lives with CP. The resulting quality of motion and task performance are analyzed through a designed clinical protocol. The results confirm the functionality of the proposed assistive platform in enhancing the capabilities of individuals who live with CP in interacting with physical environments.