From Co-design to Deployment: Toward Sustainable and Scalable Socially Assistive Robots for Speech-Language Therapy

Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) have shown potential to support children with developmental and communication challenges, yet their use in everyday clinical practice remains limited. This research aims to make SARs sustainable and deployable in real-world speech therapy by enabling non-technical users to operate and adapt them independently. Over a two-year collaboration with Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs), I conducted iterative co-design and field studies to develop and evaluate a web-based SAR platform integrated into daily therapy routines. Real-world deployment showed that the robot supported children’s engagement and was usable by SLPs, while exposing the limits of pre-scripted interactions; accordingly, my future work leverages large language models (LLMs) to generate adaptable, personalized interactions under SLPs’ supervision, contributing a pathway toward scalable, and sustainable SARs bridging lab prototypes and real-world deployment.