A Robotic and Game-Based Framework for Assisted Upper Limb Rehabilitation

Traditional rehabilitation methods tend to be tedious and repetitive, not only for the patient but also for the physiotherapist. Moreover, the exercises require the therapist to manually move the patient's affected limb continuously through many repetitions, which can become tiresome. Currently, the integration of robotic systems in rehabilitation is very promising as robots can reduce the therapist's workload while ensuring repeatability and can increase the intensity of the exercises in a controlled manner. Also, the use of games and VR has been an attractive solution to motivate and increase the commitment of patients during extended periods of rehabilitation. This paper presents a framework that connects a robotic arm with the Unity3D game engine for robot assisted upper limb rehabilitation with game-based elements. The framework response time was tested in three network configurations with increased stress levels to verify if it is secure and robust for medical use. Results show that in the worst case, the framework's average delay is 80ms and reacts to communication errors at max 300ms. The framework shows that it is viable to integrate in a medical environment using a direct connection. Precautions need to be taken if it is placed in a public network, as results show that the more side-traffic there is, the higher and more unpredictable the response time becomes.