Tailoring Upper-Limb Robot-Aided Orthopedic Rehabilitation on Patients' Psychophysiological State.
Journal:
IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering : a publication of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Published Date:
Aug 18, 2023
Abstract
Physical therapy keeps exploiting more and more the capabilities of the robot of adapting the treatments to patients' needs. This paper aims at presenting a psychophysiological-aware control strategy for upper limb robot-aided orthopedic rehabilitation. The main features are the capability of i) generating point-to-point trajectories inside an adaptable workspace, ii) providing assistance in guiding the patients' limbs in accomplishing the assigned task allowing them to freely move with a certain degree of spatial and temporal autonomy and iii) tuning the control parameters according to the patients' kinematics performance and psychophysiological state. The implemented control strategy is validated in a real clinical setting on eight orthopedic patients undergoing twenty daily robot-aided rehabilitation sessions. The psychophysiological-aware control strategy evidenced a positive impact on the enrolled participants since they are effectively conducted in a calmer condition with respect to the patients who did not receive the psychophysiological adaptation. Moreover, clinical performance indicators suggest that the proposed tailored control strategy improves motor functions.