Clinical-Based Engineering Assessment and Data Interpretation of Hand Strength for Task-Oriented Robotic Rehabilitation

Abstract

A successful implementation of any effective rehabilitation process using robotics systems must consider both the clinical and engineering issues. Useful results obtained by clinical groups are not widely received in the robotics community. Many engineering works documented do not seem to focus on the crucial clinical problems. The lack of an effective means of communication between the clinical and engineering groups is a major hindrance to any effective rehabilitation process. The main objective of this study is to quantify hand strength in patients experiencing motor disability and loss of function in the hand (e.g., following stroke and spinal cord injury). In the present work, hand strength is measured by using surface electromyography and a force sensor during gripping/pinch tasks. With the development of a robotics system, which will obtain inputs from the clinician's assessment, together with the pre-measurement results at each progress interval and through an interactive control system, the robot will provide appropriate assistance to the patient to achieve specific tasks. This study presents clinical data from hand strength measurements that have been processed and streamlined to facilitate interpretation and characterization, by virtue of the design of experiments and multivariate data analysis data analysis methods. The proposed analysis is able to provide useful data (both statistical data and graphic information) for objective and quantitative assessment towards control applications on the hand rehabilitation device that is being developed.