Towards pervasive motor and cognitive rehabilitation strategies mediated by social interaction

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of socially mediated interventions targeting specific deficits anywhere, in public spaces beyond the hospital/clinical context. Such concept would provide affordable and engaging experiences carefully designed to promote social interaction and affordable pervasive interventions without the ‘rehabilitation tag’ associated. Several playful group activities supported by haptic robots have been conducted to determine how people perceive this type of approach. This paper presents a set of playful group activities piloted to start testing the feasibility of the concept.