Edge Computing based Human-Robot Cognitive Fusion: A Medical Case Study
  in the Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapy
Qin Yang
In recent years, edge computing has served as a paradigm that enables many
future technologies like AI, Robotics, IoT, and high-speed wireless sensor
networks (like 5G) by connecting cloud computing facilities and services to the
end users. Especially in medical and healthcare applications, it provides
remote patient monitoring and increases voluminous multimedia. From the
robotics angle, robot-assisted therapy (RAT) is an active-assistive robotic
technology in rehabilitation robotics, attracting many researchers to study and
benefit people with disability like autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children.
However, the main challenge of RAT is that the model capable of detecting the
affective states of ASD people exists and can recall individual preferences.
Moreover, involving expert diagnosis and recommendations to guide robots in
updating the therapy approach to adapt to different statuses and scenarios is a
crucial part of the ASD therapy process. This paper proposes the architecture
of edge cognitive computing by combining human experts and assisted robots
collaborating in the same framework to help ASD patients with long-term
support. By integrating the real-time computing and analysis of a new cognitive
robotic model for ASD therapy, the proposed architecture can achieve a seamless
remote diagnosis, round-the-clock symptom monitoring, emergency warning,
therapy alteration, and advanced assistance.