Arm motion analysis of stroke patients in activities of daily living tasks: A preliminary study

Analyzing activities of daily living (ADL) for the development of practical upper limb rehabilitation robots is challenging in stroke patients. Basic ADL tasks using an upper limb are defined based on clinical assessment tools. The motions of 8 healthy participants and 8 stroke patients were recorded during defined ADL tasks, and then analyzed with respect to completion time, linearity of motion, and range of motion of the joints. Completion time and motion trajectories were significantly different between stroke subjects and healthy participants. For tasks involving the transfer of an object from a table to the user´s mouth, wrist radial-ulnar deviation motions should be taken into account while designing robots for gross movements via elbow and shoulder joints. Our findings can be extended to the design of trajectories of rehabilitation robots as well as of simplified robots.