title: Virtual reality aided training of combined arm and leg movements of children with CP.
abstract: Cerebral palsy (CP) occurs in over 2 out of 1000 live births and can impair motor control and cognition. Our goal was to create a robotic rehabilitation environment that mimics real-life situations by allowing simultaneous exercise of upper and lower limbs. We chose to use the Lokomat as a gait robot and added a novel removable arm robot, called PASCAL (pediatric arm support robot for combined arm and leg training), that was integrated into the Lokomat environment. We also added a virtual reality (VR) environment that enables the subject to perform motivating game-like scenarios incorporating combined arm and leg movements. In this paper we summarize the design of PASCAL and present the novel virtual environment including first experimental results. The next step will be to test whether a combined application of the virtual environment and the two simultaneously working robots is feasible in healthy participants, and finally to clinically evaluate the entire system on children with CP.
authors: Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. riener@hest.ethz.ch
authors: Robert
authors: R
authors: Riener
authors: Evangelia
authors: E
authors: Dislaki
authors: Urs
authors: U
authors: Keller
authors: Alexander
authors: A
authors: Koenig
authors: Hubertus
authors: H
authors: Van Hedel
authors: Aniket
authors: A
authors: Nagle
mesh_terms: D001132:Arm; D001676:Biofeedback, Psychology / Q000379:methods; D002547:Cerebral Palsy / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D020233:Gait Disorders, Neurologic / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D007866:Leg; D015915:Motion Therapy, Continuous Passive / Q000379:methods*; D009068:Movement; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014584:User-Computer Interface