Bimanual Haptic-desktop platform for upper-limb post-stroke rehabilitation: Practical trials

Abstract

This paper presents three haptic-based virtual applications for the undergoing rehabilitation of upper-limb post stroke patients. The three exercises are developed for their use on the multi-modal interface so-called Bimanual Haptic Desktop System (BHDS), which integrates the haptic functionalities and Video Display Terminal (VDT) within the work-plane of a desk. Firstly, two basic exercises, tracking task and lifting task, are carried out for the recovery of basic arm motion-coordination skills and steadiness of patients' upper-limb. Secondly, a video-game-like exercise, catching task, is developed to compare online the performance of healthy upper-limb with impaired ones wherein hand-eye coordination exercise of the patient is included. To this end, the proposed exercises provide to patients the potential methods to train their post-stroke upper-limbs malfunctions while reporting the quantitative parameters obtained to evaluate the improvement of patients recovery. Experimental results of a preliminary evaluation on healthy subjects are then reported and discussed to visualize in near future a pilot medical trials of the system on impaired people

A Multimodal Learning System for Handwriting Movements

“…Although the system can render force information, it requires several additional components that are not available on conventional computer desktops. In the field of rehabilitation some haptic desktop device has been proposed during the years [9] to help patients in the process of cognitive rehabilitation. Similarly to the case of writing the recovery of upper-limb rehabilitation of patients relies on the endurance and duration of exercisesbased rehabilitation therapy which are manually supervised by occupational therapists [10] [12].…”

3D Interaction Techniques for Bimanual Haptics in Virtual Environments

“…In the medical field, it can be used in surgery training, notably for minimally invasive surgery as illustrated by the bimanual surgical simulator interface [29] and the da Vinci Surgical System Simulator [18]. Another medical application is rehabilitation, as shown by a bimanual haptic desktop platform for upper-limb post-stroke rehabilitation [17]. Medicine, however, is not the only target field: non-medical applications include industrial prototyping [15] and 3D modeling software [9].…”

Novel Interactive Techniques for Bimanual Manipulation of 3D Objects with Two 3DoF Haptic Interfaces

“…Examples of these are surgery training [1], rehabilitation [2], industrial prototyping [3], and 3D graphics [4]. More generally, the use of two hands in haptics allows to realize tasks in a more natural way, as most tasks done in real life are bimanual in a way or another: from simple cases such as using scissors to more complex ones such as playing the guitar.…”