Hisyam Abdul Rahman

A novel haptic interface and control algorithm for robotic rehabilitation of stoke patients

Rehabilitation robots are gradually becoming popular for stroke rehabilitation to improve motor recovery. By using a robot, the patient may perform the training more frequently on their own, but they must be motivated to do so. Therefore, this project develops a set of rehabilitation training programs with different haptic modalities on Compact Rehabilitation Robot (CR2) - a robot used to train upper and lower limbs reaching movement. The paper present the developed haptic interface, Haptic Sense with five configurable haptic modalities that include sensations of weight, wall, spring, sponge and visual amplification. A combination of several haptic modalities was implemented into virtual reality games, Water Drop - a progressive training game with up to nine levels of difficulties that requires user to move the cup to collect the water drops.

Portable and Reconfigurable Wrist Robot Improves Hand Function for Post-Stroke Subjects

Rehabilitation robots have become increasingly popular for stroke rehabilitation. However, the high cost of robots hampers their implementation on a large scale. This paper implements the concept of a modular and reconfigurable robot, reducing its cost and size by adopting different therapeutic end effectors for different training movements using a single robot. The challenge is to increase the robot’s portability and identify appropriate kinds of modular tools and configurations. Because literature on the effectiveness of this kind of rehabilitation robot is still scarce, this paper presents the design of a portable and reconfigurable rehabilitation robot and describes its use with a group of post-stroke patients for wrist and forearm training. Seven stroke subjects received training using a reconfigurable robot for 30 sessions, lasting 30 min per session. Post-training, statistical analysis showed significant improvement of 3.29 points (16.20%, p = 0.027) on the Fugl-Meyer assessment scale for forearm and wrist components. Significant improvement of active range of motion was detected in both pronation-supination (75.59%, p = 0.018) and wrist flexion-extension (56.12%, p = 0.018) after the training. These preliminary results demonstrate that the developed reconfigurable robot could improve subjects’ wrist and forearm movement.

Investigation of upper limb movement during badminton smash

This paper discusses investigation of dynamic data of upper limb movement included wrist, elbow and shoulder during the badminton smashing performed by using wireless inertia sensor system. Research shows that the wrist movement of the player contributes a lot during the badminton smash compare to the elbow and shoulder movement. Finding of this project will help badminton players to come out with a training system or protocol that help to improve the effectiveness of training and enhance their performance.

iRest: Interactive rehabilitation and assessment tool

The ability to perform activities of daily living such as eating, drinking or writing is limited after a stroke. Rehabilitation is to encourage the recovery process and to define effective rehabilitation procedures, quantitative assessment should be included. Conventional assessment scales such as Fugl-Meyer and Motor Assessment Scale have several limitations as the scales are subjective, provide only rough estimates, and are highly dependent on the ability of the trained physiotherapist; making it difficult to quantify impairment and disability. Using these methods, small changes due to stroke are often undetected. Therefore, precise and objective measurement of motor impairment is needed to monitor and quantify the patients progress. This paper presents the design and development of an interactive rehabilitation and assessment tool, iRest. This system does not use any robotic actuator but only uses a small DC motor to generate vibration. Three robotic assessment modules were developed as a virtual reality (VR) environments namely Draw I, Draw Diamond and Draw Circle. The design of this VR considers the required movement in activities of daily living, including isolated and combined movements.

The potential of iRest in measuring the hand function performance of stroke patients

BACKGROUND Clinical scales such as Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) and Motor Assessment Scale (MAS) are widely used to evaluate stroke patients motor performance. However, there are several limitations with these assessment scales such as subjectivity, lack of repeatability, time-consuming and highly depend on the ability of the physiotherapy. In contrast, robot-based assessments are objective, repeatable, and could potentially reduce the assessment time. However, robot-based assessments are not as well established as conventional assessment scale and the correlation to conventional assessment scale is unclear. OBJECTIVE This study was carried out to identify important parameters in designing tasks that efficiently assess hand function of stroke patients and to quantify potential benefits of robotic assessment modules to predict the conventional assessment score with iRest. METHODS Twelve predictive variables were explored, relating to movement time, velocity, strategy, accuracy and smoothness from three robotic assessment modules which are Draw I, Draw Diamond and Draw Circle. Regression models using up to four predictors were developed to describe the MAS. RESULTS Results show that the time given should be not too long and it would affect the trajectory error. Besides, result also shows that it is possible to use iRest in predicting MAS score. CONCLUSION There is a potential of using iRest, a non-motorized device in predicting MAS score.

Analysis of Human Hand Kinematics: Reaching Upward Movement

Reaching movement is one of the important training for stroke patient to recover the impairment arm as this movement is critical for activities of daily living. A studied conducted to investigate the minimal requirement that a rehabilitation robot should have in order to train reaching movement in upward after the impairment arm start to overcome gravity. Result show some convex, linear and concave trajectory during reaching movement in upward direction depended on the level of the target distance. This study can be applied for designing a new simpler or improvement of the existing rehabilitation robot to train the upper limb for stroke patient.