Dinner Speech - Shelly Levy Tzedek

Social Robots in Rehabilitation

Socially assistive robots (SARs) can help motivate individuals to perform their exercise program – whether as part of a post-stroke rehabilitation program, or as a companion in a healthy-aging exercise routine.

In this talk, I will briefly review the various roles of robots in our world today, outline the current state (and blind spots) of SAR research, and present results from my lab on how young and old healthy adults interact with social robots. I will demonstrate that robots prime the movement of users, and argue that this effect should be taken as a design feature when designing any interaction with robots – within and outside the realm of rehabilitation.