Robot Provides Speech and Physical Therapy for Stroke Patient

by Gene Ostrovsky on Mar 22, 2013

Researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst have been looking into improving stroke rehab through the use of a robot. Specifically, they recruited the uBot-5 humanoid to deliver physical and speech therapy to a 72-year-old post stroke patient and discovered that the robot does a pretty good job as long as voice and physical rehab are completed separately.

The robot is considerably more interesting to work with than typical rehab exercise machines, so the patient stays engaged and focused. Because the uBot-5 has the ability to work within different rehab domains, the team wanted to find out whether concurrent training (voice and physical) would be effective or whether the two domains interfere with each other.