Assessment of an Intelligent Robotic Rehabilitation Assistant

This paper presents assessment findings of the “i-Walk” robotic rehabilitation assistant. i-Walk provides support to target groups of people with cognitive and/or mobility deficits via a pioneer robotic rollator that utilizes innovation in multimodal robot perception, user-adaptive robot autonomy and natural human-robot interaction. The i-Walk rollator was thoroughly evaluated in terms of its usability and acceptance from its intended end users (patients and therapists) in a rehabilitation centre. i-Walk was tested (i) as a whole, and in terms of (ii) its navigation and human-robot interaction functionalities, (iii) the provided walking support, and (iv) the rehabilitation exercises it offers. In total, twenty-two patients and twelve therapists evaluated the device under real conditions. The paper presents the findings from the evaluation testing of the i-Walk platform. A systematic methodology and protocol were used to test the intelligent robotic rehabilitation assistant in three different scenarios. The PYTHEIA scale was used to evaluate the subjective assessment of the device. With 5 being the highest score and 1 the lowest one, both i-Walk user groups (patients and therapists) rated the device very high to excellent (mean score of therapists = 3,74 and mean score of patients = 4,14). The same holds for the three different functionalities examined (mean score for patients and therapists relevant to: navigation and human-robot interaction support = 4.25 and 4.67; walking support = 4.27 and 4.51; rehab exercises offered = 4,33 and 4,80). As a conclusion, the i-Walk robotic rehabilitation assistant was found very good to excellent in all different domains examined.