Journal article
Constraining Upper Limb Synergies of Hemiparetic Patients Using a Robotic Exoskeleton in the Perspective of Neuro-Rehabilitation
Vincent Crocher, Anis Sahbani, Johanna Robertson, Agnes Roby-Brami, Guillaume Morel
IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering | IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC | Published : 2012
Abstract
The aim of this paper was to explore how an upper limb exoskeleton can be programmed to impose specific joint coordination patterns during rehabilitation. Based on rationale which emphasizes the importance of the quality of movement coordination in the motor relearning process, a robot controller was developed with the aim of reproducing the individual corrections imposed by a physical therapist on a hemiparetic patient during pointing movements. The approach exploits a description of the joint synergies using principal component analysis (PCA) on joint velocities. This mathematical tool is used both to characterize the patient's movements, with or without the assistance of a physical therap..
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Awarded by French National Agency for research, ANR
Funding Acknowledgements
Manuscript received September 29, 2011; revised January 10, 2012; accepted February 29, 2012. Date of publication April 03, 2012; date of current version May 18, 2012. This work was supported by the French National Agency for research, ANR, program PSIROB-ROBO-0003, to the Brahma Project. The work of A. Roby-Brami is supported by INSERM.