This master's thesis focuses on a motion study conducted during a bilateral training on the HapticMaster robotic system. The study involved fifteen healthy people and nine chronic stroke subjects whose movement was measured and evaluated.
The first chapter provides a general overview of rehabilitation robotics with an emphasis on bilateral robot-supported rehabilitation of people with sensory-motor disorders. A variety of bilateral rehabilitation methods used in rehabilitation robotics is presented. The second chapter presents the hardware and software used to implement and analyse the concept of bilateral training on a robotic system. Moreover, it explains the control of the robotic system and the course of acquiring movement signals of the upper limbs during training. The third section presents in detail the tasks designed for bilateral robotic training and their connection to the virtual environment. It also describes the protocol of the study which provides all the necessary steps for carrying out the study. In the chapter on motion analysis, the processing of the measurements is explained. The chapter also describes the parameters used to evaluate the movement of persons during the training and the approach on which the performance of the statistical analysis was based.
In general, the patients needed more time to complete a task than the healthy persons. In the patients, the trajectory similarity parameter shows a greater deviation from the reference ideal path of movement than in the healthy persons. The force of gripping throughout the task was higher in the patients than in the healthy persons. Higher damping increased the activity of the affected limb in the patients, which is shown by the absolute power parameter. Despite the greater activity of the affected limb at higher damping with the relative power parameter, we found that the level of coordination of the affected and unaffected limb remained the same. In the healthy subjects, we see a trend that indicates that the activity of the arm depends on the direction of movement. In the patients, we notice that the affected limb only follows the unaffected limb which leads the movement. For the purpose of exercising the affected upper limb, the movement protocol should be prepared in such a way that the affected limb is pulling in the direction of movement, and the unaffected limb only assists it.
Bilateral training with the presented system is intuitive, simple and suitable for persons with different types of nervous system disorders. The designed virtual task fulfilled the role of increasing the motivation of the subjects during the measurements. The presented robotic training system allows for an evaluation of the training and a feedback of the key values to the patient or the physiotherapist during or after the training. It is possible to evaluate the motor abilities of the patient's affected limb based on the measured parameters. On this basis, it is possible to adjust the course, including the intensity and the mode of training, so that it suits the needs and the abilities of each individual.
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