PRE2024 3 Group3

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Members

Name	Student number	Study	E-mail
Andreas Sinharoy	1804987	Computer Science and Engineering	a.sinharoy@student.tue.nl
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu
Theophile Guillet	1787039	Computer Science and Engineering	t.p.p.m.guillet@student.tue.nl
Petar Rustić

Planning

Roadmap

Week 1: Problem ideation and specification

Week 2: Robot design and specifications

Week 3: Begin construction of prototype of the robot

Week 4: Conduct interviews with relevant user groups

Week 5: Finish prototype of robot

Week 6: Gather feedback for the prototype

Week 7: Finalize the prototype after having taken feedback into account

Milestones

1. Selecting who and what problem we are going to address
2. Selecting how our robot shall address our problem
3. Conducting research and a literature review on our topic
4. Creating a design for the robot
5. Conducting interviews to gauge the receptiveness of the robot
6. Speaking with our primary user group to obtain their feedback on our proposed solution
7. Creating a protoype of the robot

Introduction

Problem Statement

In the Netherlands, the dominant model for speech and language (SLT) services is individual direct therapy in SLT practices with a dosage of 25 to 30 minute weekly sessions. However, currently Dutch SLT therapy practices have waiting lists of 6 to 12 months for children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) (citation). Furthermore, globally there is a shortage of speech-language pathologists in regards to their demand as there are a limited number of openings in graduate programs and the increased need for SLPs as their scope of practice widens, the autism rate grows, and the population ages (citation). Not only is there a growing unmet demand for aiding people diagnosed with speech impediments, but the number of people, and especially children, who remain undiagnosed is also an issue. For example, according to research done by (citation), boys were referred earlier than girls, and monolingual children were revealed earlier than bilingual children. On top of that, bilingual children seemed to have more complex problems at referral. The paper indicated the existence of a large body of undiagnosed girls and bilingual children with speech impediments. Therefore, for our project, we aim to address the issue of an overburdened speech therapy healthcare system by attempting to aid therapists in the practice sessions and road to recovery, allowing for them to receive and diagnose more patients.

Objectives

1. Find which aspect of the issues surrounding speech impediments - whether it's impediment diagnosis, treatment, or obstacles becoming a speech-language therapist - can be feasibly influenced by a robot to minimize the burden placed on this part of the healthcare system.
2. To measure and track the direct impact our robot can make on the system as a whole.

Hypothesis

If we can provide a robot which assists and allows for independent treatment done by patients of speech-language therapists, then the healthcare system for this issue will be less overburdened allowing for an improved efficiency in regards to both speech impairment diagnoses and treatments.

USE Analysis

Users

Personas

Scenarios

Requirements

Society

Enterprise

State of the Art

Requirements

MoSCoW Analysis

Functionality

Usage

Performance

Legal & Privacy Concerns

Data Collection & Storage

User Privacy & Consent

Security Measures

Legal Compliance & Regulations

Ethical Considerations

Third-Party Integrations & Data Sharing

Liability & Accountability

User Safety & Compliance

Design

Prototype

The prototype proposed, is focused in addressing the challenges and requirement specified earlier in the report. The traditional digonstic tests are often extremely long: two to three hours, which lead to fatigue on both patient's and therapist's side. As a result, the patient will experience the test as extremely uncomfortable, and the therapist's exhaustion will lead to a reduced accuracy of the diagnosis. The protoype will therefore break down these diagnoses into short, disgisued games, without the need of speech therapist supervision. It will be an interactive device that will ask closed/open ended question to the patient that are specifically chosen by a speech therapist or from a already existing test. Once the question is posed the robot will then record both in audio and (perhaps) video the response of the patient to be then reviewed at a later stage. Since all the response are stored digitally this will allow diagnotic to be performed abroad in areas, especially in rural areas lacking speech therapists. By allowing the therapist to rewind, replay, or pause the digital diagnosis would guarantee a more thorough analysis and lower the risk of missing details.

The prototype will hopefully reduce patient's stress and fatigue due to the test being broken down. It will lessen the workload of the speech therapisits, while also improving reliability allowing mutliple therapist review the recording whenever it is convient for them, reducing individual biases.

Device Description

Plush Appearance:

The prototype was chosen to take the form a friendly plush toy, inorder for young patients (ages 5-10) to engage more willingly with the speech and articulation exercises proposed by the plush. The friendly plush toy will disguise the assessment process as interactive play, trying to decept the child in beileving it is playing, resulting in reduced anxiety.

The soft appearnce will enable the device to me more durable, by acting as couchining for the electronics inside it. This will increase the life expectancy of such device.

Buttons

Multiple buttons are built into the plush's surfaces, which will allow to control the plush behaviour. Here are the following bottons to be installed:

- Turn on/off button

- Intiate the plush next question button

- End recording response

LED

A number of LED are on the device, to enable visual feedback, to both the patient and the supervisor (parent or speach therapist). Here are the following indicator LED on the device:

- "Recording" LED, ON if recording

- "Test complete" LED, ON is complete

- "Error" LED, ON if error present

- "ON" LED, ON if plush is turned on

System Specification

Software

Testing

Interviews

Introduction

Method

Analysis

Results

Conclusion

Bibliography

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/24602-speech-language-pathologist

https://idcchealth.org/blogs/how-much-does-online-speech-therapy-cost/

https://www.hollandzorg.com/insured/reimbursements2025/speech-therapy

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7383695/

https://www.belganewsagency.eu/nearly-one-fifth-fewer-speech-therapy-students-in-ten-years-time

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1135588.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384968031_Exploring_solutions_to_reduce_waiting_lists_for_speech_and_language_services_in_the_Netherlands

Appendix

Time reporting

Week 1

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy	Robot and Problem Ideation and Research into the Idea	2 hours
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu	Research into data privacy requirements in EU	1 hour
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All

Week 2

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy	Writing the Planning and Introduction sections of the wiki page	2 hours
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu	creating appropriate structure for legal and privacy section	1 hours
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All

Week 3

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All

Week 4

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All

Week 5

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All

Week 6

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All

Week 7

Name	Task	Time spent
Andreas Sinharoy
Luis Fernandez Gu
Alex Gavriliu
Theophile Guillet
Petar Rustić
All