Control of Robotic Assistance Using Poststroke Residual Voluntary Effort

Poststroke hemiparesis limits the ability to reach, in part due to involuntary muscle co-activation (synergies). Robotic approaches are being developed for both therapeutic benefit and continuous assistance during activities of daily living. Robotic assistance may enable participants to exert less effort, thereby reducing expression of the abnormal co-activation patterns, which could allow participants to reach further. This study evaluated how well participants could perform a reaching task with robotic assistance that was either provided independent of effort in the vertical direction or in the sagittal plane in proportion to voluntary effort estimated from electromyograms (EMG) on the affected side. Participants who could not reach targets without assistance were enabled to reach further with assistance. Constant anti-gravity force assistance that was independent of voluntary effort did not reduce the quality of reach and enabled participants to exert less effort while maintaining different target locations. Force assistance that was proportional to voluntary effort on the affected side enabled participants to exert less effort and could be controlled to successfully reach targets, but participants had increased difficulty maintaining a stable position. These results suggest that residual effort on the affected side can produce an effective command signal for poststroke assistive devices.