PATRICIA: A Personal Affective Therapist for Rehabilitation of Individuals with Cognitive ImpAirments

Annually, ~1.4 million people (between 11,000 and 13,000 of which are service members) in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI). After brain injury, many patients have emotional and motivational problems that impede their rehabilitation. There is a need for methods to sense emotional state and provide motivation for these individuals, both at home and in the clinic, to keep patients engaged in therapy. To address this critical need, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) is developing a smart phone-based device that utilizes affective computing to provide audio/visual feedback via a virtual therapist. While portable, the device can be "docked" with a rehabilitation tool to provide feedback during a physical and cognitive therapy session. While it is docked, any additional sensing that is available via the rehabilitation tool can be utilized by the virtual therapist to sense affect and for feedback. Furthermore, the therapist can be presented on the screen of the rehabilitation tool (rather than the smart phone) during the session. Progress can be monitored and recorded in a secure web data management system that is SCORM-compliant and used to adjust the affective state estimation and feedback from PATRICIA.