STTR Phase I: Low-Cost Portable Telerehabilitation System for Intelligent Stretching and Remote Assessment of Hypertonic Elbow Joint

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This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will develop a low-cost and portable tele-rehabilitation system with innovative intelligent control to provide potentially more effective therapy to patients with neurological disorders, including stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and children with cerebral palsy. The system developed will provide (1) treatment of elbow with spasticity and contracture and (2) tele-assessment of the elbow spasticity/contracture and improvement from the treatment. For the treatment function, a portable robotic device will be developed to stretch the impaired elbow joint to its extreme positions with innovative intelligent control of the resistance torque and stretching velocity. The limb-stretching device will be designed with low-cost and portability to make the intelligent stretching therapy with user-friendly interface easily available to the patients. For the remote assessment function, a haptic device through which the clinicians can remotely interact with the patients will be developed. The low cost and portability of the proposed device will make the developed system suitable for patient home and local clinic use, reaching a potentially large market. They will also allow more patients to get therapy easily which can directly benefit patients with neurological disorder such as stroke which has about 750,000 occurrences per year in the US with relevant medical expenses in the billions of dollars.