Robotic assistant for support in speech therapy for children with cerebral palsy

Nowadays the World Health Organization (WHO) claims that one billion persons live in the world with some form of disability. From this group, an important number of children with disabilities and communication disorders do not have access to adequate services for special education or health care. In this point, it is important to mention that language and communication are mainstays in the development of several intellectual, social, and cognitive human skills. Therefore, in this paper we present a low-cost robotic assistant that is able to provide support for several activities that must be carried during the speech-language therapy sessions of children with different kinds of disabilities. This assistant is able to register patient's information (personal and clinical data), the results of therapy sessions, and provide remote support to conduct reinforcement activities at patient's home (using mobile devices). With the aim of determining the real feasibility of our system, we have carried out a pilot experiment in 73 therapy sessions with 29 children with disabilities (15 received traditional therapy and 14 received therapy with the assistance of the robot). The results show a rapid adaptation of children to the new tool and good results in phonological, morphosyntactical, and semantic areas.