Tailoring Upper-Limb Robot-Aided Orthopedic Rehabilitation on Patients' Psychophysiological State

IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2023:31:3297-3306. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2023.3298381. Epub 2023 Aug 18.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Physical Therapy Modalities* / instrumentation
  • Robotics* / methods
  • Upper Extremity