Master of Science

thesisStroke is a leading cause of death and adult disability in the United States. Survivors lose abilities that were controlled by the affected area of the brain. Rehabilitation therapy is administered to help survivors regain control of lost functional abilities. The number of sessions that stroke survivors attend are limited to the availability of a clinic close to their residence and the amount of time friends and family can devote to help them commute, as most are incapable of driving. Home-based therapy using virtual reality and computer games have the potential of solving these issues, increasing the amount of independent therapy performed by patients. This thesis presents the design, development and testing of a low-cost system, potentially suitable for use in the home environment. This system is designed for rehabilitation of the impaired upper limb of stroke survivors. A Microsoft Kinect was used to track the position of the patient's hand and the game requires the user to move the arm over increasing large areas by sliding the arm on a support. Studies were performed with six stroke survivors and five control subjects to determine the feasibility of the system. Patients played the game for 6 to 10 days and their game scores, range of motion and Fugl-Meyer scores were recorded for analysis. Statistically significant (p<0.05) differences were found between the game scores of the first and last day of the study. Furthermore, acceptability surveys revealed patients enjoyed playing the game, found this kind of therapy more enjoyable than conventional therapy and were willing to use the system in the home environment. Future work in the system will be focused on larger studies, improving the comfort of patients while playing the game, and developing new games that address cognitive issues and integrate art and therapy

Design of Digital Gloves with Feedback for VR

© 2018 IEEE. This article describes the first steps in the development of a low-cost digital sensory glove that designed for use in virtual reality systems especially. Existing concepts of gloves differ in features and design, they have various functions, including feedback, tactile feedback to the electric discharge, a feeling of finger bending, finger grip strength and prediction of action and three-dimensional spatial positioning - to improve sensation and practical experience in virtual reality. Manual dynamic perception and freedom of action, common in the real world, provide instant information about objects in the virtual world. Digital gloves act not only as a remote control in VR, but also provide physical feedback for the user when they come in contact with virtual objects. This article presented an own design for inexpensive gloves that allow for proximal and distal finger joint movements, as well as position/orientation determination with an inertial measuring unit. These sensors and tactile feedback caused by the vibration patterns of the coins at the fingertips are integrated into a wireless, easy-to-use and open-source system. The design of hardware, as well as experiment plans for proof of concept, is presented

Real-time Assessment and Visual Feedback for Patient Rehabilitation Using Inertial Sensors

Rehabilitation exercises needs have been continuously increasing and have been projected to increase in future as well based on its demand for aging population, recovering from surgery, injury and illness and the living and working lifestyle of the people. This research aims to tackle one of the most critical issues faced by the exercise administers-Adherence or Non-Adherence to Home Exercise problems especially has been a significant issue resulting in extensive research on the psychological analysis of people involved. In this research, a solution is provided to increase the adherence of such programs through an automated real-time assessment with constant visual feedback providing a game like an environment and recording the same for analysis purposes. Inertial sensors like Accelerometer and Gyroscope has been used to implement a rule-based framework for human activity recognition for measuring the ankle joint angle. This system is also secure as it contains only the recordings of the data and the avatar that could be live fed or recorded for the treatment analysis purposes which could save time and cost. The results obtained after testing on four healthy human subjects shows that with proper implementation of rule parameters, good quality and quantity of the exercises can be assessed in real time

Digital dojo: a serious gaming approach for supplementing martial arts education using kinect motion capture analysis

The potential for learning through serious video games is something that has been examined closely in recent years. Teaching students through well-designed games has several potential benefits, such as immersing them in the subject material, boosting interest, comprehension, and motivation, and developing strong problem solving skills. While serious games have been heavily researched and applied to subjects such as economics and mathematics, physical tasks have traditionally been difficult to teach through computers for a number of reasons. Currently, there are no computer applications that supplement martial arts training by analyzing and critiquing students without the use of expensive and cumbersome peripherals. With the advent of compact, affordable natural human input devices such as the Microsoft Kinect, the user’s real-world body position can now be accessed and analyzed in real-time. Using current education theory, I have developed a serious game that utilizes the motion-tracking capabilities of the Microsoft Kinect device to supplement a traditional Judo education.M.S., Digital Media -- Drexel University, 201

Estudio preliminar del uso del kinect para el análisis de marcha humana en base a la cinemática de la rodilla

El análisis de movimiento es una herramienta muy usada en diversas áreas, como en la medicina de rehabilitación, donde el médico usa esta herramienta para la evaluación y diagnóstico de pacientes con alguna discapacidad motora como lo son las diferentes discapacidades que se pueden presentar en el miembro inferior. Actualmente, se utilizan equipos de captura de movimiento tridimensional para el análisis de la marcha utilizando, por mencionar algunos, arreglos de cámaras infrarrojas, marcadores retroreflactantes, escáner, entre otros. Sin embargo, estos equipos elevan el costo de la evaluación y diagnóstico, haciéndolo inaccesible el alcance de esto para personas de bajos recursos, por lo que es necesario desarrollar métodos de menor costo para lograr esto. Partiendo de lo anterior, este estudio tiene por objetivo obtener datos cualitativos y cuantitativos que permitan determinar la precisión y exactitud de un equipo Kinect para el análisis de la cinemática de la marcha humana, esto mediante una comparación entre el Kinect y un sistema de captura de movimiento Vicon, ya que este último es un sistema validado y usado para el análisis de marcha. Como resultado se obtuvo curvas de movimiento de la rodilla en una marcha humana con ambos sistemas. En el caso del Kinect, se midió la curva de movimiento de tres voluntarios, haciendo uso de dos librerías ya existentes en el caso del Kinect: Openni, en conjunto con Nite, y Kinect for Windows SDK, para conocer la variación del ángulo de la rodilla al caminar. En cuanto al Sistema Vicon, se usó un patrón de marcha de la rodilla obtenido de 40 voluntarios cuya marcha no presentaba ninguna patología. Las pruebas de este trabajo de tesis se realizaron con tres voluntarios para la toma de datos de la marcha humana con el equipo Kinect, realizando 5 pruebas a cada uno, analizando los 3 mejores resultados de cada pierna, esto es, los 3 mejores datos del ángulo de la rodilla durante una marcha humana. De esto se concluyó que hubo mayor precisión y exactitud con el Kinect cuando se usó la librería SDK. Además, con el uso de la librería SDK se obtuvo una forma de la curva del ángulo de la rodilla más similar al patrón obtenido mediante el sistema Vicon a comparación de las curvas de movimiento obtenidas con el uso de la librería OpenNI. En todos los casos se obtuvo la forma de una curva del ángulo de la rodilla durante la marcha lo suficientemente cercana al patrón de marcha obtenido mediante el sistema Vicon, con coeficientes de correlación superiores a 0.8, y se demuestra así que el Kinect puede ser usado para la evaluación de una marcha humana. De esta manera, se espera que este estudio sirva de línea base para futuros estudios y proyectos con el Kinect para el análisis de marcha.Tesi

Prototipo de un goniómetro digital empleando el sistema Kinect de Microsoft

En esta tesis se presenta el diseño, implementación y validación de un prototipo de goniómetro digital utilizando una computadora y el sistema Kinect de Microsoft. Se evaluó la validez y confiabilidad de las medidas de los rangos de movimiento (ROMs, por sus siglas en inglés) obtenidas mediante el prototipo, para determinar si son adecuadas para ser utilizadas en la práctica clínica

A Survey of Applications and Human Motion Recognition with Microsoft Kinect

Microsoft Kinect, a low-cost motion sensing device, enables users to interact with computers or game consoles naturally through gestures and spoken commands without any other peripheral equipment. As such, it has commanded intense interests in research and development on the Kinect technology. In this paper, we present, a comprehensive survey on Kinect applications, and the latest research and development on motion recognition using data captured by the Kinect sensor. On the applications front, we review the applications of the Kinect technology in a variety of areas, including healthcare, education and performing arts, robotics, sign language recognition, retail services, workplace safety training, as well as 3D reconstructions. On the technology front, we provide an overview of the main features of both versions of the Kinect sensor together with the depth sensing technologies used, and review literatures on human motion recognition techniques used in Kinect applications. We provide a classification of motion recognition techniques to highlight the different approaches used in human motion recognition. Furthermore, we compile a list of publicly available Kinect datasets. These datasets are valuable resources for researchers to investigate better methods for human motion recognition and lower-level computer vision tasks such as segmentation, object detection and human pose estimation

Sistema modular de medição do movimento humano baseado em ROS e sensores inerciais

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade UnB Gama, 2019.O presente trabalho apresenta uma proposta de um sistema modular de medição do movimento humano baseado em ROS e sensores inerciais. O objetivo do projeto é projetar um protótipo de um sistema de medição dos ângulos da articulação do cotovelo utilizando duas IMUs, uma localizada no braço, próximo ao cotovelo e outra localizada no antebraço. O ROS facilita a interconexão entre as unidades de medição inercial possibilitando o acoplamento de múltiplas IMUs. O projeto final apresenta um sistema capaz de captar os ângulos da junta do braço através de dois MPU-6050 acoplados ao corpo que realizam a aquisição desses dados que são tratados e expostos como uma subtração das angulações do movimento de inclinação pitch e roll.The present work presents a proposal of a modular system of human movement measurement based on ROS and inertial sensors. The objective of the project is design a prototype of an elbow joint angle measurement system using two IMUs, one located in the arm, near the elbow and another located on the forearm. The ROS facilitates the interconnection between the inertial measurement units allowing the coupling of multiple IMUs. The final design features a system capable of capturing the arm joint angles through two MPU- 6050 coupled to the body that perform the acquisition of these data that are treated and exposed as a subtraction of the angles of pitch and roll tilt movement

Kires: a data-centric telerehabilitation system based on kinect

185 p.It is widely accepted that the worldwide demand for rehabilitation services. To meet these needs, there will have to be developed systems of telerehabilitation that will bring services to even the most remote locations, through Internet and related technologies.This thesis is addressing the area of remote health care delivery, in particular telerehabilitation. We present KiReS; a Kinect based telerehabilitation system which covers the needs of physiotherapists in the process of designing, managing and evaluating physiotherapy protocols and sessions and also covers the needs of the users providing them an intuitive and encouraging interface and giving useful feedback to enhance the rehabilitation process. As required for multi-disciplinary projects, physiotherapists were consulted and feedback from patients was incorporated at different development stages.KiReS aims to outcome limitations of other telerehabilitation systems and bring some novel features: 1) A friendly and helpful interaction with the system using Kinect and motivational interfaces based on avatars. 2) Provision of smart data that supports physiotherapists in the therapy design process by: assuring the maintenance of appropriate constraints and selecting for them a set of exercises that are recommended for the user. 3) Monitoring of rehabilitation sessions through an algorithm that evaluates online performed exercises and sets if they have been properly executed. 4) Extensibility, KiReS is designed to be loaded with a broad spectrum of exercises and protocols