Virtual Reality Robot for Rehabilitation of Children with Cerebral Palsy (CP)

Abstract

Children with Cerebral Palsy (CP) suffer from sequential movement disorders during their life. One of the common methods in CP's rehabilitation is physiotherapy that can be accelerated by means of modern technology. Virtual reality (VR) is one of the emerging technologies that has various applications in rehabilitation and therapy nowadays. It has been illustrated that utility of this technology can improve the physical skills of children with cerebral palsy. In this paper, we have presented a novel VR therapy game in which the children get motivated to do different activities according to their physiotherapy schedule and finally the child's behavior was automatically assessed. The game consists of a virtual playground with a virtual robot that guides the children between different items and encourages them to do their best during the designed assignments. Furthermore, we managed a pilot game-session to study the acceptance of the VR game and we observed that the acceptance rate is about 75% among children with cerebral palsy, while all of the typically developing children attending the session enjoyed the game. Finally, by investigating the results, it is indicated that the performance of CPs in all the activities was significantly weaker than their typically developing peers.