title: Upper-limb kinematic reconstruction during stroke robot-aided therapy.
abstract: The paper proposes a novel method for an accurate and unobtrusive reconstruction of the upper-limb kinematics of stroke patients during robot-aided rehabilitation tasks with end-effector machines. The method is based on a robust analytic procedure for inverse kinematics that simply uses, in addition to hand pose data provided by the robot, upper arm acceleration measurements for computing a constraint on elbow position; it is exploited for task space augmentation. The proposed method can enable in-depth comprehension of planning strategy of stroke patients in the joint space and, consequently, allow developing therapies tailored for their residual motor capabilities. The experimental validation has a twofold purpose: (1) a comparative analysis with an optoelectronic motion capturing system is used to assess the method capability to reconstruct joint motion; (2) the application of the method to healthy and stroke subjects during circle-drawing tasks with InMotion2 robot is used to evaluate its efficacy in discriminating stroke from healthy behavior. The experimental results have shown that arm angles are reconstructed with a RMSE of 8.3 × 10(-3) rad. Moreover, the comparison between healthy and stroke subjects has revealed different features in the joint space in terms of mean values and standard deviations, which also allow assessing inter- and intra-subject variability. The findings of this study contribute to the investigation of motor performance in the joint space and Cartesian space of stroke patients undergoing robot-aided therapy, thus allowing: (1) evaluating the outcomes of the therapeutic approach, (2) re-planning the robotic treatment based on patient needs, and (3) understanding pathology-related motor strategies.
authors: Laboratory of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy. eugeniapapaleo@gmail.com.
authors: E
authors: E
authors: Papaleo
authors: Laboratory of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy. l.zollo@unicampus.it.
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Zollo
authors: Virtual Reality and Robotics Lab, Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, Elche, Spain. nicolas.garcia@umh.es.
authors: N
authors: N
authors: Garcia-Aracil
authors: Virtual Reality and Robotics Lab, Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, Elche, Spain. fbadesa@umh.es.
authors: F J
authors: FJ
authors: Badesa
authors: Virtual Reality and Robotics Lab, Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, Elche, Spain. rmorales@umh.es.
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Morales
authors: BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna Pisa, Pisa, Italy. s.mazzoleni@sssup.it.
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Mazzoleni
authors: Operative Unit of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy. s.sterzi@unicampus.it.
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Sterzi
authors: Laboratory of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy. e.guglielmelli@unicampus.it.
authors: E
authors: E
authors: Guglielmelli
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001132:Arm / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004551:Elbow Joint / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012371:Robotics; D012785:Shoulder Joint / Q000503:physiopathology; D020521:Stroke / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000071939:Stroke Rehabilitation
keywords: Rehabilitation robotics; Stroke rehabilitation; Upper-limb kinematics