Architecture for a Social Assistive Robot in Cardiac Rehabilitation

Social robots are demonstrating to have potential in several healthcare applications, especially in rehabilitation areas. This paper presents an architecture for a socially assistive robot system for cardiac rehabilitation, based on a model-controller structure through a finite-state machine and a behaviour module. The platform has been designed to provide social support and assistance during the therapy, aiming to improve the quality of the provided service, as well as the engagement and performance of the patients. This architecture has been tested under clinical conditions with a patient during a typical therapy session. The results show that the proposed architecture is able to adapt to the various situations present during a session, providing a robust framework to further develop the robot's behaviour towards a more natural and intuitive interaction with the patients.