Towards an Adaptive Robot for Sports and Rehabilitation Coaching

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of an adaptive social robot, using reinforcement learning, to motivate users in sports and rehabilitation, aiming to improve adherence and fill coaching gaps during solo practice.

Contribution

It presents the requirements and rationale for employing reinforcement learning to adapt a robotic coach's behavior for personalized motivation.

Findings

Requirements for adaptive robotic coaching identified

Rationale for reinforcement learning in personalization established

Framework for future implementation proposed

Abstract

The work presented in this paper aims to explore how, and to what extent, an adaptive robotic coach has the potential to provide extra motivation to adhere to long-term rehabilitation and help fill the coaching gap which occurs during repetitive solo practice in high performance sport. Adapting the behavior of a social robot to a specific user, using reinforcement learning (RL), could be a way of increasing adherence to an exercise routine in both domains. The requirements gathering phase is underway and is presented in this paper along with the rationale of using RL in this context.