A learning-based agent for home neurorehabilitation

IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2017 Jul:2017:1233-1238. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2017.8009418.

Abstract

This paper presents the iterative development of an artificially intelligent system to promote home-based neurorehabilitation. Although proper, structured practice of rehabilitation exercises at home is the key to successful recovery of motor functions, there is no home-program out there which can monitor a patient's exercise-related activities and provide corrective feedback in real time. To this end, we designed a Learning from Demonstration (LfD) based home-rehabilitation framework that combines advanced robot learning algorithms with commercially available wearable technologies. The proposed system uses exercise-related motion information and electromyography signals (EMG) of a patient to train a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The trained MDP model can enable an agent to serve as a coach for a patient. On a system level, this is the first initiative, to the best of our knowledge, to employ LfD in an health-care application to enable lay users to program an intelligent system. From a rehabilitation research perspective, this is a completely novel initiative to employ machine learning to provide interactive corrective feedback to a patient in home settings.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence*
  • Electromyography / instrumentation
  • Exercise Therapy / instrumentation
  • Feedback
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Neurological Rehabilitation / instrumentation*
  • Neurological Rehabilitation / methods*
  • Robotics
  • Virtual Reality
  • Young Adult