P RELIMINARY RESULTS FROM THE USE OF THE PHYSIOBOT PLATFORM IN STROKE

PATIENTS
C. R ODRIGUEZ G UERRERO , EFTO H OSPITAL B EATA M ARIA A NA , P. O LIVA N AVARRETE , J.C F RAILE AND P. R IVERA FARINA . I NTRODUCTION
The use of robotic devices for rehabilitation purposes has proved to be an excellent tool that helps on administering physical therapy to patients that suffered neurological injuries and diseases. Several studies have proven that arm therapy has positive effects on the rehabilitation progress of stroke patients [1]. In this work we will examine some preliminary results obtained by including robotic aided therapy in upper limb rehabilitation with the PHYSIOBOT platform. The evaluation method includes the motor assessment and fugl-meyer scales along with a custom metric based on the game score.

M ATERIALS
PHYSIOBOT, was conceived to be an intrinsically secure robot. A modied impedance controller allows the device to have reaction forces (transparent mode) of less than 3N at high speeds. It can also apply assistive forces up to 70N. It was designed, mainly searching for transparent dynamics, back drivability and safety. The mechanical structure proposed was that of a Gantry robot similar to the one proposed in [2], mostly because of the following features they intrinsically posses: Quasi isotropic inertia tensor may be achieved due to similar mechanics on both axes. Forces due to gravity, are structurally compensated, so there is no need to include a gravity compensation model.

M ETHODS
We designed a longitudinal, pre-post, non controlled study in order to assess the effectiveness of a robotic system for the retraining of the upper limb in adult patients with aquired brain injury of various etiologies. 8 Patients were selected among those with aquired brain injury of the Hospital Beata Maria Ana de Jesus in Madrid selecting those patients that fullled the following criteria: Patients with aquired brain damage with upper limbs limitations. Elapsed time from the injury > one month Ashworth score < 3. Barthel score > 60. Middle scores in both; motor assessment scale and Fugl-Meyer. Each patient included in the study should complete a treatment consisting of 10 sessions of 30 minutes for ve consecutive days per week. Each treatment session was organized in a 6 minutes active assisted session, followed by a 2 minutes resting period upon completing the 30 minutes of total practice.

R ESULTS

The primary results of the effectiveness of the study show how all the patients, acheived a significant increment in the game scores obtained along the training sessions as it can be seen in the gure above. Results also shows evidence on mo-

tor learning with a greater integration of the upper limb in the subjects own corporal schema resulting in higher scores on scales that measure the overall functional capacity and specically in the wrist and hand as shown on the data on the tables.

R EFERENCES
[1] T. Platz. : Evidence-based arm rehabilitation a systematic review of the literature In Der Nervenarzt 2003 [2] L. Zollo, D. Accoto, D. Formica and E. Guglielmelli. Zollo: Design of a planar robotic machine for neuro-rehabilitation In ICRA 2008

C ONCLUSIONS
We have observed signicant improvement in all of the patients exposed to the intensive robotic rehabilitation program exposed before. The scores on the scales improved sensibly and the subjective appreciation of the patients was positive as well. The subjects perceived, in a subjective way, an increase in the functional ability of the hemiparetic upper limb in the development of the ADL that correlates positively with objective improvement in the scales of functional assessment for the items of wrist and hand. Although the wrist and hand movements were somehow restricted, improvements on the functional ability and motor control also occurs at those two distal components. The results of this study were positive regardless of the stage of evolution in which the patient was, by varying themselves from the subacute phase to the chronic phase. The absence of a control group and the small size of the population, adds the necesity for a more developed clinical trial that will minimize the methodological biases existing in the present preliminary study.

C ONTACT
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