Usability Testing of a Bilateral Activities of Daily Exercise Robot for Stroke Therapy

In stroke rehabilitation, unilateral training of the impaired limb after stroke is often the frequent strategy used over bilateral ones. However, the clinical need for bilateral training is supported by evidence that shows that unilateral training of the impaired limb does not automatically restore bimanual coordination and function. Increased focused is needed on developing more robot-assisted therapy that can train the impaired arm bilaterally and unilaterally. Controlling these robots is often difficult and requires a better understanding of the coupling effects of the left and right hand before and after a stroke. There is a need to develop robot-assisted therapy devices that can address coupled and uncoupled bimanual movements as well as symmetry as well as asymmetry in context of human bimanual actions along with the intermanual division of labor in various ADL tasks. This study focuses on bilateral training and the use of bio-inspired control algorithms to understand impairment and recovery on Bimanual Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) by stroke subjects in terms of the arm kinematics. Healthy subjects and those with hemiplegia due to a stroke or cerebral palsy will be evaluated by a member of the research team and asked to perform a battery of tasks to test the viability and usability of a bilateral robot system called BiADLER, which allows patients to complete daily tasks with varying levels of assistance to adapt task performance to each individual subject's performance. Subjects will to provide feedback to the researchers on their observations and thoughts about the therapy devices.