Novel Haptics-Enabled Robotic Systems for Rehabilitation Therapy

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Stroke is a leading cause of death and adult neurological disability in Canada with approximately 50,000 cases of stroke occurring every year and about 315,000 Canadians currently living with the effects of stroke. It has been estimated that stroke costs the Canadian economy almost 3.6 billion dollars a year. Approximately 90% of stroke sufferers experience permanent or long-lasting disability and require labour-intensive movement therapy as early as possible following stroke, placing a significant burden on therapists and the healthcare system. This project proposes a way to address this problem through the development of robotic and haptic (sense of touch) technologies for enabling post-stroke rehabilitation of patients. Because of their ability to provide reproducible, and controlled movements, robots have been used in recent years for rehabilitation of the arm, wrist, finger, gait, and posture following stroke. Incorporation of haptics introduces an additional feature in rehabilitation therapy that of force, in addition to motion. The result is a haptics-enabled robotic system where force and motion data are transferred between the therapist and the patient. This type of bilateral interaction enables the patient to receive feedback directly from the therapist as well as the robot with which he or she is interacting resulting in concurrent interactive participation of the therapist with the patient during the therapy. This allows the therapist to not only observe the motions generated by the patient but also to feel the forces that the patient exerts via the haptic interface. The availability of force and motion data during rehabilitation therapy makes it possible to develop performance measures for assessing the level of impairment and the effect of rehabilitation. The proposed research will focus on developing hapticsenabled robotic systems for post-stroke rehabilitation and evaluate their effectiveness via a set of patient-oriented exercises.