Humanoid robot based physiotherapeutic assistive trainer for elderly health care

Abstract

Orthopaedic problems have been a constant and nagging hindrance that has been plaguing the elderly community. The treatment for this requires either medication in hospital or at their home comfort by physiotherapists. The dearth of physiotherapists in India has compounded to this problem. Moreover, the media tools, that are employed to teach physiotherapy, have been found to be monotonous and non-interactive with the patients. In pursuit of finding a solution to this problem, a Physiotherapeutic Assistive Trainer (PAT) for elders using a Humanoid Robot, named Nao has been developed. Seamless interaction between Nao and the elderly patient is achieved using the Text-to-Speech module and sensors present in Nao. Further, it replaces human trainer by carefully monitoring the performance of the elders through the camera, equipped in Nao. The array of physiotherapeutic exercises executed by Nao is repeated when the patient make their request by touching Nao's tactile sensor. The performance of the limb and neck movement depicting the motion of Nao is analysed using ADAMS software. The reliability of the developed application is validated in a real-time environment. From the results obtained, it is inferred that the Humanoid Robot based Physiotherapeutic Trainer will be the scope of near future.