Angela la Forgia’s scientific contributions

In this paper, SI-ROBOTICS, a rehabilitation programme for people with Parkinson's disease, is presented along with preliminary results. The SI-ROBOTICS system, consisting of a robotic platform, a game, wearable and environmental sensors, and an artificial intelligence algorithm, aims to sup-port the treatment of Parkinson's patients following a rehabilitation programme based on Irish dance practice. Nine patients were recruited in the study and underwent 16 sessions of the programme. The primary objective of the study was to evaluate the usability of the system. Secondly, the bene-fits in terms of improved walking, balance and reduced risk of falls were evaluated. Preliminary results suggest that the system has a good chance of success, as it was found to be usable and effective in treating conditions typical of Parkinson's disease

Introduction: Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most frequent causes of disability among older people, characterized by motor disorders, rigidity, and balance problems. Recently, dance has started to be considered an effective exercise for people with PD. In particular, Irish dancing, along with tango and different forms of modern dance, may be a valid strategy to motivate people with PD to perform physical activity. The present protocol aims to implement and evaluate a rehabilitation program based on a new system called “SI-ROBOTICS,” composed of multiple technological components, such as a social robotic platform embedded with an artificial vision setting, a dance-based game, environmental and wearable sensors, and an advanced AI reasoner module. Methods and Analysis: For this study, 20 patients with PD will be recruited. Sixteen therapy sessions of 50 min will be conducted (two training sessions per week, for 8 weeks), involving two patients at a time. Evaluation will be primarily focused on the acceptability of the SI-ROBOTICS system. Moreover, the analysis of the impact on the patients' functional status, gait, balance, fear of falling, cardio-respiratory performance, motor symptoms related to PD, and quality of life, will be considered as secondary outcomes. The trial will start in November 2021 and is expected to end by April 2022. Discussions: The study aims to propose and evaluate a new approach in PD rehabilitation, focused on the use of Irish dancing, together with a new technological system focused on helping the patient perform the dance steps and on collecting kinematic and performance parameters used both by the physiotherapist (for the evaluation and planning of the subsequent sessions) and by the system (to outline the levels of difficulty of the exercise). Ethics and Dissemination: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the IRCCS INRCA. It was recorded in ClinicalTrials.gov on the number NCT05005208. The study findings will be used for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presentations in scientific meetings.

Healthy Ageing represents one of the most crucial topics that our society will face in the next decades, due to the progressive demographic ageing of the population, (e.g., in Italy old-age dependency ratio is estimated to reach 59,7% by 2065). These statistics highlights the need of a new paradigm for active and healthy ageing, as well as a healthcare system able to support elderly population in age-related diseases management. In this work we present Let’s dance, an innovative exergame that aims to provide a new way to deliver physiotherapy for mild or moderate Parkinson’s disease patients. Within the game, the patients are asked to reproduce the choreography proposed, whose dance moves are aimed toward the achievement of specific therapeutic goals (e.g., optimize motor coordination, physical endurance, etc.). The game is part of a broader integrated platform that through sensors and actuators located on a robot device in the clinical environment and on patients themselves, can track in real-time both the game performance and the clinical KPIs and determine the assessment of patient’s therapeutic progress. In this paper we present the first prototype of Let’s dance and a use-case scenario.