Project THRIVE

Project THRIVE (Therapeutic Humanoid Robot In Virtual Environment) aims to develop and study the use of a robot assisted rehabilitation system on the arm function of children with cerebral palsy. This combination of a motivational humanoid robot and a virtual reality computer game provides a fun and motivating way for children with cerebral palsy to engage in exercise at home. This project was founded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), and is an active research collaboration between the Ohio State University and Georgia State Univerity.

System Overview

Virtual Reality Rehiblitation Game

When using the THRIVE system as the intervention, the child is immersed in a virtual world where different virtual objects (colored bubbles, squares, animals, and/or their favorite cartoon character) can be selected to appear on the screen surrounding them. The child can also interact with different VR games (‘popping’ bubbles, hitting game, catching a random butterfly, grab and then drop game). The sizes of the virtual objects, area where virtual objects appear, appearing time, and rate of virtual objects appearing can be adjusted to create different task difficulties for training.

1. Poping Game

The poping game requires children to move their imparied arm to ‘pop’ as many virtual objects as possible.

2. Hitting Game

The hitting game requires children to reach three objects consectively.

3. Catching Game

The catching game requires children to catch a random moving object.

4. Grabing Game

The Grabing game requires children to grab an object and then drop at a target location

The Robots

In this project, we collaborate with Hello Robot to design a 3D-printed 7-DoF MAKI robot. We are incorporating state-of-the-art language models to enhance engagement and interaction experiences.