The PrHand: Functional Assessment of an Underactuated Soft-Robotic Prosthetic Hand

Functional tests aim to compare the functionality of a prosthesis with a human hand. The main objective of this work is to present and evaluate an affordable prosthesis (PrHand) built with soft robotic technologies and novel joints based on compliant mechanisms. Two functional tests have been selected in this work. The first is the AHAP protocol, which evaluates how the prosthesis performs eight different grips; three variables are considered: grasping, maintaining, and grasping ability score (GAS). The results were 69.03% with 57.77% in grasping and 80.28% in maintaining. The second test is the AM-ULA, which evaluates the prosthesis by performing 23 Activities of Daily Living. PrHand prosthesis had a score of 2.5 over 4.0. The functionality of the PrHand prosthesis has similar results to other prostheses evaluated in the literature. The comparison with the human hand was 69%. PrHand presents a promising solution for amputees in developing countries regarding cost and functionalit

Towards a SAR System for Personalized Cardiac Rehabilitation: A Patient with PCI

Physical activity has been shown to have multiple benefits, such as reducing mortality rate caused by cardiovascular diseases and providing an optimal health status, making it one of the most important components of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs. However, the adherence to the program is low, and finding strategies to motivate people to perform physical training is a priority. This work proposes the introduction of a socially assistive robotics system in order to provide monitoring and motivation to patients within a CR program. A study was carried out with one patient accompanied by the robot during a conventional phase II, namely 16 sessions of the cardiac rehabilitation program. The results show the reliability of the system to provide information to assess the patient's performance during the activity. Additionally, the patient was able to improve his posture patterns along the sessions due to the continuous monitoring provided by the robot

Social Assistive Robot for Cardiac Rehabilitation: A Pilot Study with Patients with Angioplasty

© 2018 Authors. Socially Assistive Robots (SAR) have been gaining significant attention in multiple health care applications. However, SAR has not been fully explored in cardiac rehabilitation (CR). One of the most critical issues in CR is the lack of adherence of patients to the rehabilitation process. Hence, based on the evidence that the presence of an embodied agent increases compliance, we present in this paper the integration of a social robot in a CR programme. The setup is evaluated with four patients divided into two conditions (robot and no robot), in order to evaluate its first four sessions as a preliminary study. The results show that this system might have a promising impact on CR and holds promise to be extended to a larger group of patients

Architecture for a Social Assistive Robot in Cardiac Rehabilitation

Social robots are demonstrating to have potential in several healthcare applications, especially in rehabilitation areas. This paper presents an architecture for a socially assistive robot system for cardiac rehabilitation, based on a model-controller structure through a finite-state machine and a behaviour module. The platform has been designed to provide social support and assistance during the therapy, aiming to improve the quality of the provided service, as well as the engagement and performance of the patients. This architecture has been tested under clinical conditions with a patient during a typical therapy session. The results show that the proposed architecture is able to adapt to the various situations present during a session, providing a robust framework to further develop the robot's behaviour towards a more natural and intuitive interaction with the patients

Collaborative and Inclusive Process with the Autism Community: A Case Study in Colombia About Social Robot Design

One of the most promising areas in which social assistive robotics has been introduced is therapeutic intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders (CwASD). Even though there are promising results in therapeutic contexts, there is a lack of guidelines on how to select the appropriate robot and how to design and implement the child-robot interaction. The use of participatory design (PD) methods in the design of technology-based processes for CwASD is a recognition of the stakeholders as "experts" in their fields. This work explores the benefits brought by the use of PD methods in the design of a social robot, with a specific focus on their use in autism spectrum disorders therapies on the Colombian autism community. Based on what proved to be effective in our previous research, we implemented participatory methods for both the CwASD and the stakeholders. The process leverages the active role of participants using a focus group approach with parents and specialists, and scene cards, narrative and handmade generative methods with the children. To overcome some challenges of traditional PD processes, where not all community actors are considered, we included a Colombian community consisting of therapists, nurses, caregivers and parents. The proposed PD process provides an opportunity to learn from several community actors (and thus different cultural and social aspects of developing countries), improving traditional robot design methods. In this way, the findings are summarized through a set of guidelines regarding the design of a social robot-device suitable to be implemented for robot-assisted therapy for CwASD

Using a Personalised Socially Assistive Robot for Cardiac Rehabilitation: A Long-Term Case Study

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Human-robot sensor interface for cardiac rehabilitation.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world. A program of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is related to physical activities or exercises to regain the optimal quality of life. CR relies on the necessity to evaluate, control and supervise a patient's status and progress. This work has two objectives: on the one hand, provide a tool for clinicians to assess the patient's status during CR. On the other hand, there is evidence that robots can motivate patients during therapeutic procedures. Our sensor interface explores the possibility to integrate a robotic agent into cardiac therapy. This work presents an exploratory experiment for on-line assessment of typical CR routines

Sensor Interface for Cardiac Rehabilitation Monitoring: Pilot Clinical Study

In this paper, is presented a pilot clinical study of a monitoring system designed for cardiac rehabilitation (CR). The system allows measuring three main metrics: cardiovascular, spatiotemporal gait and difficulty in physical activity parameters. In this study, the sensor interface was used with two volunteer patients from the phase II of CR. During the experiment, the monitoring system was used to report the parameters and store the information from the patients without interrupting the session. It was found that there is no difference between the data from the interface and the measurements that are normally taken by physiatrists. Additionally, the system allows the continuous measurement and visualization of the status of the patient, which might prove useful for physiatrists. This work presents an exploratory experiment for an on-line assessment method for CR sessions, which in turn, opens the possibility of implementing different biofeedback methods to improve the rehabilitation effects of CR

An Open-Source Social Robot Based on Compliant Soft Robotics for Therapy with Children with ASD

Therapy with robotic tools is a promising way to help improve verbal and nonverbal communication in children. The robotic tools are able to increase aspects such as eye contact and the ability to follow instructions and to empathize with others. This work presents the design methodology, development, and experimental validation of a novel social robot based on CompliAnt SofT Robotics called the CASTOR robot, which intends to be used as an open-source platform for the long-term therapy of children with autism spectrum disorder (CwASD). CASTOR integrates the concepts of soft actuators and compliant mechanisms to create a replicable robotic platform aimed at real therapy scenarios involving physical interaction between the children and the robot. The validation shows promising results in terms of robustness and the safety of the user and robot. Likewise, mechanical tests assess the robot’s response to blocking conditions for two critical modules (i.e., neck and arm) in interaction scenarios. Future works should focus on the validation of the robot’s effectiveness in the therapy of CwASD.</jats:p