Robotic Coaching of Complex Physical Skills

Abstract

The research area of using robots to coach complex physical skills is underserved. Whereas robots have been used extensively in the form of robotic orthoses to rehabilitate early trauma patients, there is more that can be done to develop robots that help children, the elderly and late-stage rehabilitation patients to excel at physical skills. In order to do this, we must develop robots that do not actuate on the students, but coach them through hands-off modalities such as verbal advice and demonstrations. This approach requires sophisticated perception, and modeling of the student's movement in order to deliver effective advice. Preliminary results suggest that these goals can be achieved with consumer-grade sensing hardware. We present planned future work towards achieving this vision.