A VP-based application to improve usability of an upper-limb rehabilitation orthosis

Nowadays Virtual Prototyping (VP) of robots dynamics is an effective tool to simulate the system behavior and improve the quality of rehabilitation activities. Using a VP software environment, the patients can be visually guided in their actions and the physiotherapist can control the system parameters easily to investigate the patients´ performances in real time. In this paper VP concept is introducted to support the use of an upper-limb orthosis and to improve therapeutic efficacy in rehabilitation. The system adopted is a human-worn rehabilitation exoskeleton enhanced with a VP-based application to make therapeutic exercises more accessible while reducing the effort in using the system and managing the therapy. The VP application in particular merges computational musculoskeletal analysis with simplified controls, 3D viewing and real time simulation of the patients´ movements. The application has been designed to specifically address the needs of patients and therapists and improve the satisfaction in use of the global system as well as the therpy results. The system validation is based on an ad-hoc evaluation protocol and is carried out by directly involving final users furing rehabilitation sessions. Experimental results demonstrated how VP prototyping effectively support the system use from both patients and physiotherapists: on one hand patients are nove motivated and they learn extract movements faster; on the other hand physiotherapists are supportedin diagnosis and data elaboration, and finally the rehabilitation therapy efficiency is improved.