Would You Trust a Toddler with a Robot?

NAO is a twenty two inch robot which the researchers at the University of Delaware wish to use as a new approach to paediatric rehabilitation based on social interaction between robots and humans. Basically they let the young kids with disabilities play with the robot.

Children with motor disabilities require a lot of practice during rehabilitation. Many of the tasks that form this process are repetitive and  NAO can be programmed to personalize the experience for each child based on their ability and knowledge level. It will also react to the behaviors of individual children and deliver personalized interventions. Tanner says that this work has the potential to change lives by providing an immediate effect.

The science project is being called GEAR (Grounded Early Adaptive Rehabilitation) and will have robotics expert Herbert Tanner, mobility researcher Cole Galloway, and computational linguist Jeffrey Heinz working with researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Imaging Science.

The interdisciplinary approach is needed to make this rather unique program a success. Its not just the children who are learning in the current studies as per Heinz, who says that they can use insights from how children learn language to design robots that can likewise learn from their experience.