An ISB-consistent Denavit-Hartenberg model of the human upper limb for joint kinematics optimization: validation on synthetic and robot data during a typical rehabilitation gesture

Several biomedical contexts such as diagnosis, rehabilitation, and ergonomics require an accurate estimate of human upper limbs kinematics. Wearable inertial measurement units (IMU s) represent a suitable solution because of their unobtrusiveness, portability, and low-cost. However, the time-integration of the gyroscope angular velocity leads to an unbounded orientation drift affecting both angular and linear displacements over long observation interval. In this work, a Denavit-Hartenberg model of the upper limb was defined in accordance with the guidelines of the International Society of Biomechanics and exploited to design an optimization kinematics process. This procedure estimated the joint angles by minimizing the difference between the modelled and IMU-driven orientation of upper arm and forearm. In addition, reasonable constraints were added to limit the drift influence on the final joint kinematics accuracy. The validity of the procedure was tested on synthetic and experimental data acquired with a robotic arm over 20 minutes. Average rms errors amounted to 2.8 deg and 1.1 for synthetic and robot data, respectively. Clinical Relevance - The proposed method has the potential to improve robustness and accuracy of multi-joint kinematics estimation in the general contexts of home-based tele-rehabilitation interventions. In this respect adoption of multi-segmental kinematic model along with physiological joint constraints could contribute to address current limitations associated to unsupervised analysis in terms of monitoring and outcome assessment

COVID-19 and digital acceleration: An investigation about citizens’ perception of digitalized public services in Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to move many daily activities online that could hardly have been conducted in respect of social distancing, from education to free time, to recreation, to contact with friends. The public sector has also suffered from this need by responding with great acceleration on existing digital public services and by facilitating the access of others through online tools and platforms. Through an exploratory research design, this paper qualitatively investigates the effects of the acceleration of digitization on the perceived utility and quality of public services in Italy as the first nation and most affected by the wave of infections. The results show that accelerating the digital transition has positive effects on citizens’ perception of the activity of the Public Administration, specifically, positively influencing citiziens’ perception of digitalized public services in Italy. Moreover, we shed light on four main topic useful to led future strategies in terms of: 1) New technologies integration and citiziens’ assistance; 2) Hybridization of digital services; 3) The role of age: Elderly citizens and socialization; and 4) Digital skills gap reduction strategies. Relevant implications for managers and policymakers are discussed together with some suggestions to led future public digitalization strategies