Innovative Therapies for Hemispheric Brain Impairment: The Role of the PAL Robot in Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation

Hemispheric brain damage, which can happen after a stroke, a traumatic injury, or a neurodegenerative disorder, makes motor and cognitive functions unevenly harmed. The old ways of doing rehabilitation have some problems. They relies too much on therapists, don't modify their treatment to each person, and can't easily change with each person's progress. This thesis answers the question, How can socially assistive robotics be used to provide adaptive and autonomous neurorehabilitation for hemispheric brain damage? To find out more about this, the PAL Robotics TIAGO robot used and the ROS2 middleware to make and use a modular rehabilitation framework. The system has speech recognition, the ability to track facial expressions and body posture, the ability to navigate on its own, and robotic arm exercises that are controlled by the trajectory. Therapy routines are like recipes in that they are made to fit each person's needs. They change in real time depending on how the patient respons them. The experimental simulations in a living-lab setting at the University of Pavia is done to see how well people could complete tasks, how responsive the system was, and how engaged users were through interaction. The results show that the robot can do multi-modal rehabilitation routines on its own with consistent accuracy and responsiveness. Data gathered through voice and visual feedback show that the system can keep an eye on therapy and change it as needed. This work contributes a validated, ROS2-based robotic framework for neurorehabilitation that can be scaled up and used in an interactive way to support traditional therapy. The results set the stage for future progress in robotic care that is smart and focused on the patient.