Abstract
Physical movement impairments caused by central nervous system dysfunction or by muscle spasms generated from other neurological damage or dysfunction can often make it difficult or impossible for affected individuals to interact with computer generated environments using the conventional mouse interfaces. This work investigates the use of a 2 dimensional haptic device as an assistive robotic aid to minimize the effects of the pathological absence of motor control on the upper limb in impaired users while using a mouse interface. The haptic system used in this research is a two degree of freedom (DOF) Pantograph planar device. To detect the intended user motion, the device is equipped with force sensing allowing the monitoring of the user applied loads. Impedance based techniques are used to develop a “clumsy” motion suppression control system. The erratic motion suppression techniques and the experimental system setup are evaluated in two dimensional tracking tasks using a human subject with failure of the gross coordination of the upper limb muscle movements resulting from a disorder called ‘Muscle Ataxia’. The results presented demonstrate the ability of the system to improve the tracking performance of the impaired user while interacting with a simple computer generated 2D space.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been a considerable body of work directed towards the development of rehabilitation or power and motion coordination assisted robotic devices, and as a result, a wide and diverse range of systems has been produced
The tracking difficulty of the muscle ataxia subject is demonstrated in Fig. 7 which shows the rough trajectories generated while performing two dimensional target tracking tasks
The high variation among the several trials is a direct consequence of the unsteady and randomly occuring clumsy motions resulted from the muscle ataxia impairment
Summary
There has been a considerable body of work directed towards the development of rehabilitation or power and motion coordination assisted robotic devices, and as a result, a wide and diverse range of systems has been produced. Sate for various disabilities or pathological conditions such as; Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy, muscle ataxia, spinal cord injuries, stroke and cerebral palsy Each of these disabilities are typically associated with symptoms such as reduced strength, restricted or irregular jerky movements, poor motion coordination and a continuum of impairments involving spasms and tremors. Caldwell / A study on the use of haptic feedback to assist users with impaired arm coordination providing assistance for weak movements, may help this population to complete motions/tasks that cannot be executed due to the impaired coordinated or through insufficient muscle strength Based on this hypothesis extensive research efforts, in the last 10–15 years, have focused on the evaluation of robotic systems as aid systems for improving the independence or for individual rehabilitation. The results from the trials with the impaired subject are depicted in Section V while Section VI addresses the conclusions and comments on further developments
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