Developing a baseline for upper-body motor skill assessment using a robotic kinematic model

Abstract

In the rehabilitation field, determining the effectiveness of an intervention protocol begins by comparing the individual's movement characteristics against a baseline. In most settings, this baseline is determined through clinical studies involving a range of patients belonging to the same demographic group. Unfortunately, this leads to a process that is difficult to repeat for all patient demographics, or all movement characteristics, given the demands on clinicians' and patients' time for performing such clinical baseline measurement studies. To address this issue, we discuss a method that allows clinicians to objectively assess an individual's movements and compare the resulting outcome kinematic metrics to a kinematic baseline. Instead of collecting human patient data, we propose a robotic kinematic model that generates a baseline for different kinematic parameters in real-time as a function of the state of a given task. We evaluate our methodology on elbow and shoulder range of motion (ROM) angles obtained from eleven typically developing children. We compare the user's ROM angles to those generated by the proposed model, and discuss the potential of the model to be used in various intervention protocols.

Effect of a Home-Based Virtual Reality Intervention for Children with Cerebral Palsy Using Super Pop VR Evaluation Metrics: A Feasibility Study

“…For shoulder and elbow ROM angle calculations, we adhered to the definition of angles between two limb segments used in various biomechanics scenarios; we then calculate the difference between the final joint angle and the initial joint angle [ 32 , 33 ]. Further details on computing the elbow and shoulder joint angles can be found in Garcia-Vergara et al [ 28 ].…”

“…We recently developed a virtual reality evaluation game called Super Pop VR using a low-cost VR system to increase access to a motion analysis system at home [ 27 , 28 ]. Since Super Pop VR is designed as an interactive game, the person involved in the test is also not aware of being evaluated.…”

“…When the player pops these bubbles, the 3D Kinect captures and saves the user's upper-body 3D joint coordinates of the assessment, to be run through a metrics code to compute the spatiotemporal reaching kinematics of the user in real time (e.g., movement time, path length, shoulder range of motion, elbow range of motion, and number of movement units). Detailed algorithms of the metrics code have been published elsewhere [ 27 , 28 ]. Children with different levels of physical disabilities can use Super Pop VR, such as CP, traumatic brain injury, stroke, or even orthopedic conditions.…”