As part of the FEATHERS (Functional Engagement in Assisted Therapy Through Exercise Robotics) project, two motion tracking and one social networking applications were developed for upper limb rehabilitation of stroke survivors and teenagers with cerebral palsy. The project aims to improve the engagement of clients during therapy by using video games and a social media platform. The applications allow users to control a cursor on a personal computer through bimanual motions, and to interact with their peers and therapists through the social media. The tracking applications use either a Microsoft Kinect or a PlayStation Eye camera, and the social media application was developed on Facebook. This paper presents a usability testing of these applications that was conducted with therapists from two rehabilitation clinics. The "Cognitive Walkthrough" and "Think Aloud" methods were used. The objectives of the study were to investigate the ease of use and potential issues or improvements of the applications, as well as the factors that facilitate and impede the adoption of technology in current rehabilitation programs.

Physiological fatigue during long-term Web browsing was investigated by the entropy-based method. A noninvasive instrument was used to gather 8-hour continuous electrocardiography signals from subjects who were asked to answer the psychological fatigue questionnaire every 2 hours. These data were used to calculate the heart rate (HR), traditional sample entropy (SampEn), and multiscale entropy (MSE). HR decreased as the browsing task began, but increased slightly after 4.5 hours. The psychological fatigue score gradually increased, implying that more severe subjective fatigue was experienced as Web browsing proceeded. In contrast, the traditional SampEn first increased and then oscillated after 2.5 hours. The browsing time of 2.5 hours may be a clue to physiological fatigue. The MSE results showed that the cardiac dynamic systems of undergraduates and males were more complex than those of graduates and females, respectively. Thus, SampEn may have the potential for estimating physiological fatigue during long-term Web browsing. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Real-time feedback is essential for motor learning. Automated feedback is especially valuable for at-home stroke rehabilitation in the absence of therapist supervision. This study examined the effect of real-time corrective vibrotactile feedback for training bilateral reaching motions. A bilateral upper-limb motor learning system, comprising a wireless wearable sleeve-armband device for providing vibrotactile feedback, a computer target game, and a customized motion tracking technology, was developed and evaluated on both hemiparetic stroke survivors and able-bodied people. This paper introduces the system and presents preliminary data for one hemiparetic stroke subject and one healthy subject performing bimanual reaching motions in the transverse plane. Vibrotactile training was found to successfully alter both subjects' original trajectories and to improve the motion symmetry of the stroke subject. These preliminary findings indicated the potential efficacy of vibrotactile cues for unsupervised motor learning in both the healthy and the stroke populations.

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