THRIVE: Therapeutic Humanoid Robot In Virtual Environment

THRIVE: Therapeutic Humanoid Robot In Virtual Environment

|Authors: Jin Xu, Yu-Ping Chen, Ayanna Howard

|Venue: arXiv preprint | Year: 2026

|arXiv: 2608.14462v1

Abstract

This paper presents THRIVE (Therapeutic Humanoid Robot In Virtual Environment), an at-home rehabilitation platform that integrates a suite of virtual-reality upper-body rehabilitation games, a real-time camera-based motion-tracking system, and a socially interactive robot therapist. The system is designed for therapy and intervention in children with upper-limb motor impairments, which can be improved through consistent, task-specific practice. THRIVE features a set of newly designed, engaging games that target functional reaching, grasping, and object-manipulation movements through customizable popping, hitting, catching, and grabbing tasks, while the camera-based tracking system captures the child’s kinematic performance during play. A robot therapist - deployable either as a physical robotic coach or as a remote-presence virtual agent - delivers adaptive, dynamic feedback to motivate the child and guide their movements toward therapeutic goals. THRIVE decouples the therapeutic games from the robot embodiment, extending the platform to support various embodiments and different robots within one modular system. This robot-agnostic design makes THRIVE affordable, scalable, and readily adaptable for sustained use in the home, offering a practical pathway to more consistent and engaging upper-limb therapy for children with motor function impairments.

Key Contributions

• This paper presents THRIVE (Therapeutic Humanoid Robot In Virtual Environment), an at-home rehabi…
• The system is designed for therapy and intervention in children with upper-limb motor impairments…
• THRIVE features a set of newly designed, engaging games that target functional reaching, grasping…
• A robot therapist - deployable either as a physical robotic coach or as a remote-presence virtual…
• THRIVE decouples the therapeutic games from the robot embodiment, extending the platform to suppo…

Topics

• manipulation
• vision
• reinforcement-learning
• human-robot-interaction

Code & Data

No code repository linked in paper metadata.

BibTeX

@article{Xu2026_260814462v1,
  title     = {THRIVE: Therapeutic Humanoid Robot In Virtual Environment},
  author    = {Jin Xu and Yu-Ping Chen and Ayanna Howard},
  year      = {2026},
  eprint    = {2608.14462v1},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.RO},
  url       = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14462v1}
}