A Hand Motor Skills Rehabilitation for the Injured Implemented on a Social Robot

In this work, we introduce HaReS, a hand rehabilitation system. Our proposal integrates a series of exercises, jointly developed with a foundation for those with motor and cognitive injuries, that are aimed at improving the skills of patients and the adherence to the rehabilitation plan. Our system...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Francisco Gomez-Donoso, Felix Escalona, Nadia Nasri, Miguel Cazorla
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/7/2943
Description
Summary:In this work, we introduce HaReS, a hand rehabilitation system. Our proposal integrates a series of exercises, jointly developed with a foundation for those with motor and cognitive injuries, that are aimed at improving the skills of patients and the adherence to the rehabilitation plan. Our system takes advantage of a low-cost hand-tracking device to provide a quantitative analysis of the performance of the patient. It also integrates a low-cost surface electromyography (sEMG) sensor in order to provide insight about which muscles are being activated while completing the exercises. It is also modular and can be deployed on a social robot. We tested our proposal in two different facilities for rehabilitation with high success. The therapists and patients felt more motivation while using HaReS, which improved the adherence to the rehabilitation plan. In addition, the therapists were able to provide services to more patients than when they used their traditional methodology.
ISSN:2076-3417