Development of Haptic Bracelets Based Arm Swing Feedback System for Stroke Survivors

For stroke survivors, the ultimate goal of rehabilitation training for community life is to increase the dynamic stability, which can be helped by increasing the walking speed or symmetry. Several researches have reported the use of haptic stimulation to increase the dynamic stability of gait. Haptic systems have many advantages such as, portability and low-cost, that make them extremely suited for rehabilitation applications. However, until now the use of these systems has been focused mainly on the lower limbs. Gait is a harmonic motion that includes both the upper and lower limbs. A study with people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease showed that it is possible to bring about spatiotemporal gait changes using an arm swing cueing device. Therefore, in this paper, we present the development and verification of a haptic bracelet designed to deliver arm swing based haptic feedback for the rehabilitation of stroke survivors. The presented system is portable, composed of inexpensive sensors and it can measure the arm swing angle correctly regardless of the location or direction of the sensor. The measurements made using the developed system were compared to those made using a standard motion tracking system and only an acceptable amount of error was found. The developed system may be used to characterize the effect of upper extremity motion modification during gait. It may also be used as a system for improving gait speed and symmetry of stroke patients using haptic vibration feedback.