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Adherence to home-based rehabilitation exercises is a challenge for individuals with chronic neurological conditions. Socially assistive robots are becoming an option to resolve compliance challenges with rehabilitation exercises. An in-depth exploration of how natural human-robot interaction could help improve adherence to home-based rehabilitation exercises is justified. The first study objective was to explore how a robot that offers supervision and encouragement could increase adherence to home-based long-term rehabilitation exercises for individuals with neurological conditions. The second objective was to explore perceived obstacles and facilitators related to using a robot with artificial audition capabilities. These results will be used to guide the design and optimization of robot audition technology within a larger research program. Six focus groups were held to elicit the views of individuals with neurological conditions (n=3 groups) and health care professionals (n=3 groups). Content was analyzed qualitatively. Four topics were addressed during the focus groups: challenges in performing exercises, needs to be met by the technology, desired technological characteristics and anticipated impacts. Our results identified different needs, characteristics and anticipated limitations as preliminary key items to guide a user-centered design. Participants were generally positive about the concept of using socially and technically assistive robotic technology to meet the home-based exercise needs of people with neurological conditions. Health care professionals, however, anticipated more limitations than clients.
Auger et al. (Wed,) studied this question.