A video game for an upper limb rehabilitation robotic system for children with cerebral palsy

This paper describes a video game for the rehabilitation of the pronation and supination movements of children with cerebral palsy. It is used as an interface for a robot that is currently under development. The game was programmed in LabVIEW and MATLAB is used for analyzing the results. It simulates a formula one racecar on a racetrack. Its objective is to keep the car inside the racetrack´s limits. The pronation and supination movements control the car´s horizontal position on the screen. A first preliminary test was done with a healthy 11-year-old right-handed child. The same racetrack was played 5 times with each arm. The results showed that the child had an average difference of 3.32% against the expected path when she used her right arm and an average difference of 3.86% against the expected path when the left arm was used. Future improvements will be taken into account, for example, the use of the robot´s motor in order to give assistance or resistance to the arm movements of the patient.