Long-Term Social Human-Robot Interaction for Neurorehabilitation: Robots as a Tool to Support Gait Therapy in the Pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic has affected the population worldwide, evidencing new challenges and opportunities for several kinds of emergent and existing technologies. Social Assistive Robotics could be a potential tool to support clinical care areas, promoting physical distancing, and reducing the contagion rate. In this context, this paper presents a long-term evaluation of a social robotic platform for gait neurorehabilitation. The robot's primary roles are monitoring physiological progress and promoting social interaction with human distancing during the sessions. A clinical validation with ten patients during 15 sessions were conducted in a rehabilitation center located in Colombia. Results showed that the robot's support improves the patients' physiological progress by reducing their unhealthy spinal posture time, with positive acceptance. 65% of patients described the platform as helpful and secure. Regarding the robot's role within the therapy, the health care staff agreed (>95%) that this tool can promote physical distancing and it is highly useful to support neurorehabilitation throughout the pandemic. These outcomes suggest the benefits of this tool to be further implemented in the pandemic.