Assessment of Haptic Interaction for Home-Based Physical Tele-Therapy using Wearable Devices and Depth Sensors.

Journal: Studies in health technology and informatics
Published Date: Jan 1, 2016

Abstract

In this paper a prototype system is presented for home-based physical tele-therapy using a wearable device for haptic feedback. The haptic feedback is generated as a sequence of vibratory cues from 8 vibrator motors equally spaced along an elastic wearable band. The motors guide the patients' movement as they perform a prescribed exercise routine in a way that replaces the physical therapists' haptic guidance in an unsupervised or remotely supervised home-based therapy session. A pilot study of 25 human subjects was performed that focused on: a) testing the capability of the system to guide the users in arbitrary motion paths in the space and b) comparing the motion of the users during typical physical therapy exercises with and without haptic-based guidance. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system.

Authors

  • Angelos Barmpoutis
    J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
  • Jose Alzate
    Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Florida, U.S.A.
  • Samantha Beekhuizen
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, U.S.A.
  • Horacio Delgado
    Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, U.S.A.
  • Preston Donaldson
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, U.S.A.
  • Andrew Hall
    Department of Histopathology, UCL Medical School, Royal Free Campus, Rowland Hill Street, London NW3 2QG, UK. Electronic address: andrewhall1@nhs.net.
  • Charlie Lago
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, U.S.A.
  • Kevin Vidal
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, U.S.A.
  • Emily J Fox
    Department of Physical Therapy, University of Florida, U.S.A.

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