Abstract
Robots for therapy applications can increase the quality of life for children who experience disabling circumstances, by, for example, becoming therapeutic playmates for children with neurological disorders. There are numerous challenges though that must be addressed – determining the roles and responsibilities of both clinician, child, and robot; developing interfaces for clinicians to interact with robots that does not require extensive training; and developing methods to allow the robot to learn from their child counterpart. Applying such human-interaction methodologies enables a new era of progress in robot-assisted therapy applications for children with disabilities. In this talk, I will discuss the domain of intelligent robots and supporting assistive technologies for therapy applications. I will present our approaches in which these technologies can address real-life needs for both improving quality of life as well as tackling rehabilitation and therapy objectives for children with physical disabilities.