Testing a robot auto-adaptive performance regulation system in the treatment of Hemineglect

Details

Supervisors

Edwards, Martin

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques

Abstract

Hemineglect is a spatial attention deficit causing a difficulty to respond to stimuli presented in the space contralateral to a brain lesion. However, the condition is heterogenous and therefore includes a variety of clinical signs and frequently co-occurs with motor impairments. Because of these factors, finding a treatment is challenging. In the present study, we tested the validity of the ROBiGame serious game running on the REAplan end-effector rehabilitation robot. Our aim was to evaluate the robot-integrated automatic adaptation system, which increases or decreases the difficulty of the task according to the patient’s performance, thus establishing personalised training sessions. For this purpose, we collected preliminary data on nine stroke patients who were clinically diagnosed with hemineglect and motor impairments. Patients were asked to play the ROBiGame, which involved the patient making sandwiches for customers. The patient had to select target food objects from food distractors, reach to the object and drag the object back to the starting point using the robot’s end-effector. The target objects were displayed across the screen, and difficulty was moderated by using an increased number of targets and distractors (more difficult) or target cues and response time (less difficult). The robot recorded cognitive and motor performance and performed difficulty adaptation in the game so that all patients scored 75% correct responses. The preliminary results suggested that the current implementation of the regulation system does not fully allow optimal adaptation of the treatment of hemineglect. While the regulation of targets and sandwich time variated according to the patients’ performances, the inconsistent results obtained for the regulation of distractors raise questions about the optimal combination of these parameters and calls for a revision of the underlying model