A Robotic Fitness Coach for Children

Physical activity is any activity that involves body movement (including everyday activities as well as organized sports and exercise). It provides significant benefits for everyone, especially for children during their growth and development. Research shows that regular physical exercise can have a profound positive impact on physical, psychological and cognitive function. However, physical education class, alone, does not result in enough physical activity to meet the recommendations of World Health Organization (WHO). Also, many of the activities are not designed to be intrinsically interesting. Therefore, the main concern is how to motivate children to value and selfregulate such activities and complete them independently without external pressure. This research study presents the development of a system for practicing exercises using a robot assistant. The robot acts as an exercise coach, giving users voice instruction on the exercise they need to perform, while also showing them the exercise. Users repeat the exercise, while monitoring on the computer screen whether they are performing it correctly. The computer application predicts the poses of human joints and body parts through key point detection approach, using machine learning algorithms. The system was tested with users, and the preliminary results are presented in this article.