TheraDyad: Feasibility of an Affordable Robot for Multi-User Stroke Rehabilitation

The influence of haptic interaction in human-human, human-robot, and human-robot-human teams is a growing field of research. Prior investigations of robot-based haptic dyads have shown that a haptic connection to a partner during motor training may improve motor learning. These studies, however, primarily investigate healthy young adults. Stroke patients may benefit from learning with a haptic connection to a partner, but it is unclear if this connection will cause the patient to slack-reducing their effort or attention during training. We present our design for the TheraDyad, a low-cost robotic rehabilitation system to haptically connect dyads with and without impairments. We also present preliminary motor learning and user experience results for nine participants (61.7 ± 4.9 years), of whom three are post-stroke and six are healthy, learning a 1-DOF target tracking task with the TheraDyad. Our findings support the usability of TheraDyad and suggest that stroke survivors do not reduce effort when paired with a healthy partner. Furthermore, we provide preliminary evidence that interacting with a healthy partner improves motor learning for the post-stroke partner. More work is needed to generalize these results and draw clear conclusions about the use of haptic dyads for multi-user robot-based post-stroke rehabilitation.