Robot Cars Could Help Ease Children’s Preoperative Stress

News from Spain just arrived. What is the team at the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) working on? Read on to find out more. Kids are sensitive and get fearful when they have to undergo medical treatment. If this leads to hospitalization or surgery, they suffer from stress and anxiety. It can have a short-term impact on their psychological, social, and educational development. To make them feel at ease, researchers have invented a small robot car to reduce their stress before surgery.

Dealing with the stress before surgery

Researchers from Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital have conducted a study that shows that six out of ten young patients suffer from anxiety before receiving anesthesia while prepping for surgery. Admitting to a hospital is already stressful for them. The environment is not very welcoming for them as they have to deal with a group of strangers, and the procedures are also unpleasant. All of these cause stress and may cause chronic pain in the long run.

The hospital tried some alternatives to calm the children’s emotional state. They introduced various activities and games involving dogs and clowns. They let parents enter the operating theatre to some extent, but nothing seemed to work. Even pharmacological strategies failed because they could make them more anxious, and there are some side effects as well. In that case, playing with a robot car before surgery can be a good initiative for children.

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Àgata Lapedriza, professor of the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia, and Telecommunications and a researcher at the UOC, is working on an idea. She is the joint leader of an international project actively working on computing and social robotics to reduce children’s fear before undergoing treatment or surgery in a hospital. Prior studies have shown some effective results of using child-sized motorized vehicles to reduce stress levels. So, they developed a prototype robot car equipped with AI and sensors to catch the signals about the emotional state and react accordingly. However, it has been proved that robots can help even in surgeries.

Effectiveness of the robot car on children’s mind

To develop the robot car prototype and improve its effectiveness, they collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, Hyundai, more than 80 children between 3 and 9 years old from Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital, and medical staff, including doctors, nurses, and experts in affective computing, social robotics, data science, sensor design, machine learning, and computer vision.

The car has AI and sensors, along with a surface for interaction, to capture the kids’ facial expressions, heart rate, and breathing patterns. These are indicators of emotions that help them adapt to their feelings by changing the music, colors, and smells and helping them relax. Being in the driving seat gave the children a sense of control, which made them confident and calm.

“The pilot project has enabled us to evaluate the adoption response of this type of technology in a real hospital environment and to fine-tune the design of the robot,” said Àgata Lapedriza. The robot car project helped to see which sensors and actions are more useful and viable than the others.

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The prototype robot car is a promising innovation for pediatric healthcare. This innovation addresses pressing medical advancement needs and has a long-term positive impact on children’s minds and bodies. If tolling experiences like this can be made easier anyhow with tech, we should do it, especially when it’s about children.

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Photo credit: The images shown are partially from a Hyundai concept, and the other part has been taken by Àgata Lapedriza from UOC. Each is credited separately underneath the photos to identify the respective owner better.
Source: UOC News