Conference Agenda

Although rehabilitation therapies are still the most common treatment for those who have had a stroke, they can be dull and repetitive. Despite recent advances in the field of rehabilitation robots, they can be complicated to operate and needs plenty room space in most cases. This paper presents a gaming console (GC) that acts as an interface system between the rehabilitation system and the patient. It is connected to a mechanically actuated ankle rehabilitation mechanism, which incorporates the usage of the patients’ upper limbs to work on the range of motion of the ankle. The mechanical mechanism (MM) provides the base for gamified ankle rehabilitation; adopting the mechanism with the developed GC that comprises commercial games. The GC translate the rotary actions of MM to corresponding controller in the games.

Rehabilitation exercises are a crucial component in the treatment of ankle injuries. With the increasing demand on physiotherapists, many advances have been made in robot-assisted ankle rehabilitation, which require an attachment mechanism of the foot or leg on the device given the limited to absent intervention of the therapist. However, holding the ankle securely may cause physical discomfort and for the patient to feel tied to the mechanism. This paper introduces a gripper of the plantar surface of the foot for ankle rehabilitation employing a universal Granular Jamming Gripper (GJG). The gripper comprises a granule filled membrane that allows the patient’s foot to be immersed in it when it is filled with air and hardens around the foot when vacuum is applied. The paper also investigates the optimal filling percentage of the membrane, membrane thickness and the effect of granule types of different physical properties (ground coffee, table salt, coffee/salt mixture, and granular sugar) on the gripping ability and overall function of the GJG. Tensile and immersion tests demonstrated the suitability of the GJG for gripping a foot model as well as the increased gripping function with a 0.25 mm membrane filled to 60 % with granulated sugar.

Gonarthrosis is a wide-spread disease which restricts the mobility of patients. In the case of unilateral leg amputees the risk of gonarthrosis is increased due to the muscular imbalance and the prosthesis. The risk could be decreased by early detection of initial lesions. The aim is to transfer methods of the acoustic-kinetic analysis as introduced before to unilateral leg amputees. The task is the development of a test exercise for the long-term monitoring of unilateral leg amputees.

To adapt the known measurement setup to the needs of unilateral leg amputees a test rig with handles measuring the hand forces was added. This was meant to support the proband while performing the test exercise of three knee bends in ten seconds. She had to repeat the exercise five times with a time lag of one week. The knee bends were analysed using two video cameras (frontal, sagittal), a force plate and force sensors at the test rig.

Pattern were found in the signals of the forces and the knee kinematics. A double hump pattern of the ground reaction force was found in every knee bend phase which describes the flexion, the turning point and the extension. A stabilization of the pattern is observered from the second day forward. The support of the hand force occurred repeatedly around the turning point. The sagittal knee angles show smooth curve progessions and the repetition on all days.

The results indicate a trend of good repetition of the test exercise. In comparison with the signal patterns of the ground reaction force of the non amputated patients in gonarthrosis therapy the development of the test exercise “3 knee bends in 10 sec with hand support” is confirmed. For this reason we will use this kind of test exercise in prospective studies with unilateral leg amputees.

A new telerehabilitation system is introduced for stroke patients with hemiparesis. It consists of two internet-connected robots for remote wrist rehabilitation. A cloud-based website serves as a centralized interface for patients and doctors, allowing remote control of the system during therapy sessions. To enhance the haptic feedback and stability of the system, a torque/velocity control algorithm is implemented. These control algorithms incorporate damping and spring terms from an impedance control algorithm to synchronize and maintain the positions of both end effectors. Additionally, a wrist evaluation model has been introduced to calculate stiffness and damping coefficients, essential for monitoring patient progress and improving treatment efficacy. The wrist model is evaluated using multiple linear regression method. Experimental testing demonstrates the potential of the proposed approach in enhancing telerehabilitation system performance.

Digitalization in the healthcare sector is progressing rapidly. In the field of measuring instruments for manual dexterity, digitization has resulted in major limitations in terms of ease of use and usability. This study describes the development of a digital nine-hole peg test for assessing hand dexterity that can be used just as easily and quickly as the original nine-hole peg test. The extensive validation of the dNHPT includes the investigation of validity, reliability, clinical utility and user-friendliness

This paper presents the final results of the validation of the dNHPT. The results show comparable results between the clinical utility of the dNHPT and the NHPT (74% of all ratings equal to or better than the NHPT) and good usability with SUS scores of 78 and 85. Several recommendations for further development of the dNHPT were identified.

The newly developed dNHPT presented here supports the quality of data collection through automated time measurement and result presentation and shows good usability and clinical utility ratings.