Ramses: A Robotic Assistant and A Mobile Support Environment for Speech and Language Therapy

Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) is an area focused in the rehabilitation of people suffering from different kinds of disorders and disabilities related with language and communication. According to latest estimates of the World Health Organization, the most of countries do not have appropriate structures, and enough personnel and resources to provide healthcare and rehabilitation services these persons. This problem is more complex in developing countries, given that a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) must to carry out several activities besides providing the therapy as such. On those grounds, this paper presents a robotic assistant able to provide support for SLPs during the execution of several activities related with the SLT such as: patient's progress monitoring, interacting with patients suffering from emotional and behavioural disorders, report generation, and in general, supporting the execution of different kinds of therapy activities (visual, motor, and auditory stimulation, relaxation activities, etc.). This approach is based on an integrative environment that relies on mobile ICT tools, an expert system, a knowledge layer and standardized vocabularies. This proposal has been tested on 65 children suffering from different types of disabilities, and the achieved results are encouraging.