ROBOT-BASED EVALUATION TOOLBOX FOR STROKE PATIENTS

Interactive Motion Technologies, Inc., the exclusive licensee of MIT- MANUS robot technology, has successfully redesigned MIT's alpha- prototype into a commercially-viable "robot therapist," called the InMotion2 Shoulder-Elbow Robot. A number of universities and hospitals in the U.S. and Canada have purchased the InMotion2 robot, both for research purposes and to provide stroke patients with robot- aided neuro-rehabilitation. Clinical research based on MIT-MANUS indicate that stroke patients undergoing such therapy improved further and faster than a control group. Robot-aids may also provide clinicians with time and cost savings if programmed both to assist with therapy, and to generate practical data outputs. While robots possess the native ability to record kinematic and force data generated by neurologically-impaired patients, an ongoing challenge is to extract meaningful data from such measurements, facilitating a more efficient rehabilitation process. We therefore propose to develop objective and quantitative robotic measures designed to (1) evaluate patients' performance with a robotic device, and (2) integrate the robot- based evaluation protocol into a semi-automated patient assessment procedure. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: - Hardware: Robot-aided rehabilitation products for different limb segments, i.e., arms, wrist, fingers, legs, spatial for group therapy. - Software: (1) Instructional software ("video games") for different exercise therapy routines tailored to different patient needs; (2) Evaluation package to monitor the amount and quality of therapy delivered to the patient, as well as to quantify patient's performance.