A robotic telerehabilitation game system for multiplayer activities

Background. The rise in cases of motor impairing illnesses demands the research for improvements in rehabilitation therapy. The study of robotics for enhancing motor recovery has been gaining momentum, but there is still little standardization of tools. Objectives. This paper shows the current development state of a proposed new robotic treatment platform, primarily geared towards post-stroke cases, but intended to be reusable for other kinds of motor disabilities. Methods. This project differs from current solutions because of its modular design, distributed processing, remote interaction capabilities, and by dealing with patients motivation while treated with multiplayer video-games. Custom and commercial robotic orthoses could be used by individuals, while they are being treated, to join each other in a competitive or cooperative activity in a virtual reality environment. As network-connected participants could be separated by large distances, communication delays are minimized or compensated. For a viability test, two healthy subjects played a customized Pong game together using the system. Results. The preliminary testing provides evidence that the designed infrastructure could become a viable platform for rehabilitation systems, as data can be synchronized across users within a tolerable deviation margin. Conclusion. The system proves itself feasible, but improvements on handling bad communication conditions and definition of performance evaluation protocols are needed.