A Simple Robotic System for Neurorehabilitation

15 years; Has your stroke hospital solved ANY OF THESE? 

• quantity? 

• duration? 

• content?
  

• intensity?

 A Simple Robotic System for Neurorehabilitation

 
Autonomous Robots 19, 271–284, 2005c
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2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

  S. MICERA
∗
AND M.C. CARROZZA
 ARTS Lab, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
micera@sssup.it
E. GUGLIELMELLI
Campus Biomedico University, Rome, Italy
G. CAPPIELLO, F. ZACCONE AND C. FRESCHI
 ARTS Lab, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
R. COLOMBO AND A. MAZZONE
 IRCCS Salvatore Maugeri Foundation, Service of Bioengineering, Veruno (NO), Italy
C. DELCONTE AND F. PISANO
 Division of Neurology, Veruno (NO), Italy
G. MINUCO
Service of Bioengineering, Veruno (NO), Italy
P. DARIO
 ARTS Lab, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

Abstract.

 In the recent past, several researchers have shown that important variables in relearning motor skills and in changing the underlying neural architecture after stroke are the quantity, duration, content, and intensity of training sessions. Unfortunately, when traditional therapy is provided in a hospital or rehabilitation center, the patient is usually seen for few hours a week. Robot-mediated therapies could improve this situation but even if interesting results have been achieved by several groups, the use of robot-mediated therapy has not become very common in clinical practice. This is due to many different reasons (e.g., the “technophobia” of some clinicians, the need for more extensive clinical trials) but one of the more important is the cost and the complexity of these devices which make them difficult to be purchased and used in all the clinical centers.The aim of this work was to verify the possibility of improving motor recovery of hemiparetic subjects by using a simple mechatronic system. To achieve this goal, our system(named“MEchatronicsystemforMOtorrecoveryafterStroke” (MEMOS)) has been designed with the aim of using mainly “off-the-shelf products” with only few parts simply manufactured with standard technology, when commercial parts were not available. Moreover,the prototype has been developed taking into account the requirements related to the clinical applicability such as robustness and safety.