Development of Robot-Human Imitation Program for Telerehabilitation System

This paper presents the development of a robot human imitation program which will be used in a telerehabilitation system for children with disabilities. The purpose of this project is to provide an easier and more efficient way of providing a rehabilitation process for children with disabilities, especially for autistic children. The number of autistic patients needing rehabilitation is increasing rapidly and with the problem of shortage of professional therapist, this can be an alternative solution to assist the therapist during rehabilitation period. Therefore, robot-human imitation program is developed consisting of autonomous programmable humanoid robot NAO and Microsoft Kinect as the motion sensing input device. The imitation program is conducted by sets of instructions given to the patients to imitate certain pose done by humanoid robot NAO. Microsoft Kinect Sensor is used to determine whether the imitation follows the required criteria or not. Matlab software interacts with both humanoid robot NAO and Microsoft Kinect Sensor to perform the rehabilitation program. The number of trials needed to achieve the required imitation will be translated into points and these points will be uploaded into online database for record and evaluation process.