George, J.

Gnanayutham, Paul

English

Name not available

Developing Rehabilitation Robots for the B rain Injured 
Paul Gnanayutham
1
 and Jennifer George
2
 
1
School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, Buckingham Building, 
Lion Terrace, Portsmouth, PO1 3HE, United Kingdom, 
2
Qantm College, SAE House, 297 Kingsland Road, E8 4DD London, United Kingdom, 
1paul.gnanayutham@port.ac.uk, 2jennifer.george@sae.edu 
Abstract. Although rehabilitation robotics have been used for helping 
disabled persons in various areas of disability, such as stroke rehabilitation, 
very little research has been done with the brain injured persons and robotics. 
This paper discusses the implementation of a simple model, which consists of 
brain body interface, a computer, an interface program and an electronic circuit 
to interface the computer to a robotic arm. This was an exploratory research that 
was carried out that allowed a brain-injured person to do simple tasks using 
robotic arms. This paper also looks at rehabilitation robotics both past and 
present. The paper goes on to explore the new avenues available to enhance this 
exploratory research. In this paper, we take the brain body interface 
communications a step further where the brain injured persons will not only 
communicate but will also be able to do simple tasks. 
K eywords: Rehabilitation, Robot, Brain Injury, Cyberlink™, Brain Body 
Interface, Brain Computer Interface 
 
1 IN T R O DU C T I O N 
The word  ‘Robot’  come  originally  from  a  play  in  1923 with  the  meaning  a  ‘slave 
worker’  (from  the 1923 play Rossum’s Universal Robots). The early uses of robots 
were mechanical devices using gears and levers. The advent of computers and the fast 
and furious new technology has given the robots the capability to perform 
sophisticated tasks others than mundane routine jobs. Robots are in action in the 
Military, Health sector, Manufacturing, Space exploration, Mining etc. If asked to 
describe a robot many people would describe something from a science fiction, our 
mental images are guided more by science fiction than science reality. The reality is 
probably a car assembly robot rather than the evil Dalek of Dr Who. Originally most 
robots were used as tools in a manufacturing environment, whether spraying, welding 
or assembling. These are normally referred to as assembly robots. It has long been 
realised that, while robotics will continue to have a vital role in the manufacturing 
industry, the areas for growth lie in applications in "unstructured and hostile 
environments " . Many applications in an unstructured environment are "service" 
applications. Service robots have for a while been used for tasks at home such as 
2 Paul Gnanayutham1 and Jennifer George2 
cleaning, cutting the lawn, etc. Also hazardous environments such as searching 
underwater, within a nuclear reactor, the making safe of bombs and mines.  
   Over the past 20 years  there  has  been  much  research  in  the  area  of  ‘advanced 
robotics’. The precision of a medical robot is claimed to be even better than a skilled 
surgeon (www.prosurgics.com). In addition to surgery, robotic technology can be 
used in several ways to benefit people with disabilities. Although there are many 
potential benefits for the disabled user, there are also very strong requirements and 
compromises, which must be considered in integrating the robotic arm with the 
wheelchair. Robots are being used in places such as Japan for caring for the 
physically handicapped people. These robots do the daily routine chaos thus taking 
the burden away from the careers and also saving a lot of money. The operators 
control these mobile robots through the Internet and mobile phones (Yoshiyuki et al., 
2000).  The new trend in robotics is to control robots remote using the Internet or 
mobile phone.  
1.1.   Rehabilitation robotics from past to present 
Tzika and team claim (2008) that the brain has the ability to regain function through 
rehabilitative exercises following a stroke also that the brain is malleable, even six 
months or more after a stroke, which is a longer period of time than previously 
thought. This gives hope to people who have had strokes, their families and the 
rehabilitative specialists who treat those (Tzika et al., 2008). 
   The first referenced rehabilitation manipulator was the CASE manipulator built in 
the early 1960, which could move the user's paralysed arm (Kim and Cook, 1985). 
Mid 1970 saw the next stage of rehabilitation robotics in the form of a workstation 
based system designed by Roesler with five degree of freedom manipulator was 
placed in a specially adapted desktop environment, using rotating shelf units (Roesler 
et al., 1978). Another early workstation system was that of Seamone and Schmeisser. 
The arm of this system was based around an electrically powered prosthetic arm, 
mounted on a horizontal track. Various items of equipment (e.g. telephone, book rest, 
computer discs) were laid out on the simple but cleverly designed workstation table 
and could be manipulated by the arm using preprogrammed commands (Seamone and 
Schmeisser, 1986). Mason and Peizer (1978), developed the first ever robot arm 
mounted to a wheelchair, potentially offering much greater freedom than a 
workstation mounted system. The four degree of freedom arm and its novel 
telescoping design allowed it to reach to the floor or the ceiling (Hillman, 2003). 
Some more examples (Hillman et al., 2002a):  
 Desk based system - "Wolfson"  robot - for the desk based activities; 
 Trolley mounted system - "Wessex"  robot - requires a carer to move a trolley-based 
manipulator around from one room to another; 
 Wheelchair mounted system - "Weston"  robot - shares many common components 
with the trolley-mounted system, but mounted to a wheelchair. 
   All the rehabilitation robots mentioned above needed some type of motoring ability 
to manipulate such as a switch or joy stick and utilise the robot for carrying out 
various tasks. However the brain injured quadriplegic community was not catered by 
Developing Rehabilitation Robots for the B rain Injured  3 
the developers of the rehabilitation robots above. This paper looks at the possibility of 
catering for this group of brain injured quadriplegic individuals to use rehabilitation 
robots for similar usage. The results of an exploratory study carried out using a 
robotic arm and bio-potentials from the forehead of a brain injured user is used an 
example of what could be done to cater for this group of brain injured quadriplegic 
individuals.  
2 D ESI G NIN G F O R T H E BR A IN INJUR E D 
   There are several areas where a robotic device might assist a disabled person, here 
are some examples (Hillman et al., 2002b): 
 Eating and drinking (Fig.1); 
 Personal hygiene, such as washing, shaving;  
 Work and leisure, such as handling papers, books or videos (Fig.2); 
 Access, such as opening doors, operating light switches or lift buttons; 
 Reaching and moving, such as reaching down to pick up an item off the floor or 
reaching up to get an item off of a shelf. 
 
 
F ig. 1. Robot for eating and drinking 
 
 
F ig. 2. Work and leisure, such as handling papers, books or videos  
 
4 Paul Gnanayutham1 and Jennifer George2 
   As for the mechanical construction of attaching a robotic extension to a wheelchair 
there are different requirements in comparison to either a desktop or mobile system. 
Mounting a robotic extension into a desktop provides a "workstation" based approach, 
and all the items to be manipulated are placed within a known area of reach. The 
mobile approach is similar since the trolley-mounted robotic extension is intended to 
interact with objects at a number of different workstations (Hillman et al., 2002b). 
Another choice of construction will be an agent architecture in which the agent must 
operate  without  hindering  the  user’s  ability  to  take  direct  action  when  he/she will 
choose (Hillman et al., 2002b). 
3 R O B O TS F O R Q U A DRIPL E G I C BR A IN INJUR E D  
   Not all users with special needs can use a mouse, trackball, and keyboard or have 
the ability to speak to a speech recognition system. So we need a device that provides 
communication capabilities for those who cannot use any of the regular input devices 
(Gnanayutham and George, 2007 and 2009) such as: 
 HeadMouse™ - using wireless optical sensor that transforms head movement into 
cursor movement on the screen; 
 Tonguepoint™  - a system mounted on mouth piece; 
 Eye Tracker™  -  a system that allows the monitoring of both the conscious and 
unconscious gaze 
   All the devices above have their advantages and disadvantages. A user with cerebral 
palsy will not have good motor abilities to operate the ‘Tonguepoint™’. A user with 
spinal vertebrate fusion may not be able to turn his or head and the HeadMouse™ will 
be of no use to this user.  
 
F ig. 3. Cyberlink 
   At present one of the brain computer interface devices that can cater for the 
quadriplegic  brain  injured  individual  is  the  Cyberlink™  (Fig. 3) because it uses a 
combination of bio-potentials.  ‘Cyberlink™’  can  be  used  as  a  technology that 
combines eye movement, eye blink, facial muscle and brain wave bio-potentials 
detected  at  the  user’s  forehead  to  generate  a  mouse  input  that  can  be  used  for 
communicating. Cyberlink™ uses  the  forehead as noninvasive site, for convenience 
and also because it has a rich variety of bio-potentials. The signals for 
communications are obtained by attaching probes on the forehead of the patients. It is 
3 silver/silver chloride contact electrodes (i.e. non-invasive), which are placed on a 
Developing Rehabilitation Robots for the B rain Injured  5 
headband that picks up EEG (brain wave), EMG (muscle movement wave) and EOG 
(Eye ball movement) signals when applied on the forehead.  These are then fed into 
an amplifier box and then to the mouse port, so the computer just sees the device as a 
mouse, which, is used to control the cursor.  The main signals used are due to muscle 
movement, only about 10% is due to thought processes (Brain wave). We used the 
Cyberlink™  to  communicate  with  the  brain  injured  persons  to  get  basic yes/no 
answers (Gnanayutham and George, 2009a). This time we want to go a step further 
and make the brain injured user perform simple tasks using a robotic arm (Doherty et 
al., 2003, Gnanayutham et al., 2001). 
 
   The model for operating the robotic arm using the brain body interface consisted of 
following components: 
1. A Cyberlink™ brain body actuated control technology system that connects to the 
computer via the serial port; 
2. A computer with a parallel port and serial port free. An Interface program written 
in Visual Basic™ to operate the functions of the robotic arm; 
3. An Electronic circuit to read the parallel port of the computer and operate the 
motors that manipulate the robotic arm; 
4. A robotic arm (Super Armatron™) that is operated using a series of motors. 
 
 
F ig. 4. Model for operating the robotic arm 
 
   The fig. 4, shows the model for operating the robotic arm using the brain body 
interface. The computer needed one serial port for the Cyberlink™ and a parallel port 
for the electronic circuit that interfaced the computer with the robotic arm. The 
Cyberlink probes were attached to the forehead of the user and the other end of the 
Cyberlink was connected to the serial port of the computer (Gnanayutham et al., 
2001).  
 
6 Paul Gnanayutham1 and Jennifer George2 
 
F ig. 5. Interface Program 
   The computer had a program written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0™, which had six 
paths for controlling the robotic arm (Fig. 5). The paths ended up in one of these 
functions, arm go up, arm down, arm left, arm right, open claw and close claw. When 
one of these six functions were triggered, the program sent a binary code to the 
parallel port, which drove one of the motors to carry out what was requested by the 
user. The Electronic circuit used in the above setup is shown below. 
 
 
F ig. 6. Electronic Circuit  
 
   In Fig. 6, we see the block diagram of the electronic circuit that was used. The 
output from the parallel port was decoded and used for switching transistors. The 
transistors switched the motors on and off in either direction. The mechanical side of 
the circuit included aligning shafts and making sure there were no vibrations. 
   The robotic arm described in this section was developed and used as a live 
demonstration at the ICCIT'2001 conference in New Jersey where a quadriplegic 
individual picked up a cup to his mouth to show, how we can use a brain body 
interface and operate a robotic arm. Since then the researchers have concentrated on 
mainly communication, recreation and controlling the environment using brain body 
interfaces (Gnanayutham et al., 2009b). Now the researchers feel it’s time to help this 
group of the disabled who perhaps need robotics than other motor impaired 
Developing Rehabilitation Robots for the B rain Injured  7 
individuals. There is one previous successful research carried out by Felzer, and 
Freisleben (2002) but no commercial product has come out of that piece of research. 
At present work is carried out at University of Essex also on navigating a wheel chair 
using bio-potentials (Chen et al., 20007, Lai et al., 2009).  
4 SU M M A R Y A ND C O N C L USI O NS  
This paper indicated the various choices of rehabilitation robots that are available in 
the market, used mainly for stroke rehabilitation and other disability where the user is 
able manipulate a mouse, switch or a joystick. This paper also tackled the area of 
giving this sophisticated and powerful robot as a tool for the brain injured who 
perhaps need it more than any other category of people. Robots have been in science 
fiction for many years and but now we can extend these robots to the brain injured 
quadriplegics personnel by using their bio-potentials as the input instead of a 
mechanical switch, mouse or a joy stick. This exciting new research is going to 
change many a brain-injured person’s life and set them on the path of rehabilitation.  
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Developing rehabilitation robots for the brain injured

Portsmouth University Research Portal (Pure)

Adaptive Personalisation for Researcher-Independent Brain-Body Interface Usage,

Communicating, Recreating and Controlling the Environment Using an Adaptive Brain-Body Interface,

Development of the Mobile Robot System to aid the daily life for Physically Handicapped,

EMG-based Hands-Free Wheelchair Control with EOG Attention Shift Detection,

Evaluation of the JHU/APL Robot Arm Workstation, Interactive Robotic Aids. World Rehabilitation Fund Monograph#37,

HaWCoS: the &quot;hands-free&quot; wheelchair control system,

Improving the flexibility of an assistive Robot,

Inclusive Design for Brain Body Interfaces, Edited by

Manipulation and Mobility Aids, Electronic Devices for Rehabilitation, Chapman and

Medical Manipulator for Quadriplegic,

Rehabilitation robotics from past to present - a historical perspective, ICORR,

Robotics for the brain injured: An interface for the brain injured person to operate a robotic arm –

Stroke Rehabilitation Improved By Robotic Technology, Medical News Today,

The Medical Manipulator and its Adapted Environment: A System for the Rehabilitation of Severely Handicapped,

The OWI-007 Robotic Arm, Cyberlink Interface, and Visual C + + Interface are a Great Help to the Handicapped and a Good Platform for Teaching Technology, Njedge.net Conference,

The Weston Wheelchair Mounted Assistive Robot

Use of Forehead Bio-signals for Controlling an Intelligent Wheelchair,

https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/services/downloadRegister/134279/Developing_Rehabilitation_Robots_for_the_Brain_Injured-1.pdf

Developing rehabilitation robots for the brain injured

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