Robot-Enhanced Mobility Training of Children With Cerebral Palsy: Short-Term and Long-Term Pilot Studies

Mobility is a causal factor in infant development. Neural impaired infants, e.g., with cerebral palsy (CP), are at risk for further developmental delays due to lack of self-generated mobility. It is possible that these infants may benefit from robot-enhanced mobility, where the mobility comes from a robot that the child drives via a joystick. We believe that such a mobility experience will enrich the child and minimize further delays in attaining some of the childhood developmental and social milestones. In order to address the broad goal posed earlier, one can ask the following simpler questions: 1) Will children with CP learn to drive a robot using a joystick? 2) Will these children with CP sustain interest in doing so over multiple training sessions? 3) Will such a robot-enhanced mobility impact development scores in this group of children? 4) Will a larger number of robotic training sessions be more effective to enhance these developmental scores ? This paper reports the first results from two pilot studies conducted by our research group on robot-assisted mobility training, where children with CP performed two tasks across multiple training sessions. We found that, after training with the robot, children who performed 30 training sessions, labeled as “long-term study,” advanced in their driving skills and showed significant improvements in clinical scores such as Gross Motor Function Measure, Quality of Upper Extremity Skills Test, and Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (mobility with/without caregiver and social function with/without caregiver).