Article

Efficacious stroke rehabilitation depends not only on patients' medical treatment
but also on their motivation and engagement during rehabilitation exercises.
Although traditional rehabilitation exercises are often mundane,
technology-assisted upper-limb robotic training can provide engaging and
task-oriented training in a natural environment. The factors that influence
engagement, however, are not fully understood. This paper therefore studies the
relationship between engagement and muscle activities as well as the influencing
factors of engagement. To this end, an experiment was conducted using a robotic
upper limb rehabilitation system with healthy individuals in three training
exercises: (a) a traditional exercise, which is typically used for training the
grasping function, (b) a tracking exercise, currently used in robot-assisted
stroke patient rehabilitation for fine motor movement, and (c) a video game
exercise, which is a proliferating approach of robot-assisted rehabilitation
enabling high-level active engagement of stroke patients. These exercises differ
not only in the characteristics of the motion that they use but also in their
method of triggering engagement. To measure the level of engagement, we used
facial expressions, motion analysis of the arm movements, and electromyography.
The results show that (a) the video game exercise could engage the participants
for a longer period than the other two exercises, (b) the engagement level
decreased when the participants became too familiar with the exercises, and (c)
analysis of normalized root mean square in electromyographic data indicated that
muscle activities were more intense when the participants are engaged. This study
shows that several sub-factors on engagement, such as versatility of feedback,
cognitive tasks, and competitiveness, may influence engagement more than the
others. To maintain a high level of engagement, the rehabilitation system needs
to be adaptive, providing different exercises to engage the participants.

Langue : ANGLAIS