With the shortage of rehabilitation clinicians in rural areas and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, remote rehabilitation (telerehab) fills an important gap in access to rehabilitation, especially for the treatment of adults and children experiencing upper arm disability due to stroke and cerebral palsy . We propose the use of a socially assistive robot with arms, a torso, and a face to play games with and guide patients, coupled with a telepresence platform, to maintain the patient-clinician interaction, and a computer vision system, to aid in automated objective assessments, as a tool for achieving more effective telerehab . In this paper, we outline the design of such a system, Lil'Flo, and present a uniquely large perceived usefulness evaluation of the Lil'Flo platform with 351 practicing therapists in the United States . We analyzed responses to the question of general interest and 5 questions on Lil'Flo's perceived usefulness . Therapists believe that Lil'Flo would significantly improve communication, motivation, and compliance during telerehab interactions when compared to traditional telepresence . 27% of therapists reported that they were interested in using Lil'Flo . Therapists interested in using Lil'Flo perceived it as having significantly higher usefulness across all measured dimensions than those who were not interested in using it.
Index: Health Care Management, Human-Centered Robotics, Rehabilitation Robotics, Social HRI, Telerobotics and Teleoperation