Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) is one of the leading causes of adult disability in developed
nations, typically resulting in impairment in one of the upper extremities. There is a clinical
need for both sensitive, repeatable motor assessment techniques and increased access to intensive
physical therapy in the face of resource limitations. The Human Robotics Group has
developed a System for Independent Task-oriented Assessment and Rehabilitation (SITAR) for
upper limb rehabilitation which integrates low-cost instrumented objects that mimic the motions
and manipulations used in everyday tasks.
Analysis of force, trajectory, and acceleration data has resulted in new metrics that may
correlate with, and ultimately enhance, standard clinical ordinal scales of assessment. This
thesis presents preliminary validation and testing of instrumented key and box objects for fine manipulation tasks. The data from these experiments were used to develop metrics that can be
investigated in future clinical trials with the SITAR.
An instrumented stylus was developed to enhance SITAR's training functionality. The stylus
can measure grip force, writing force, and kinematic information. The stylus is comparable to
a typical marker with diameter of approximately 4 cm and is comfortable to hold. A simple
exoskeleton mechanism to aid in hand opening is presented. The device is located on the dorsal
side of the hand, causes minimal obstruction, and act on the proximal and medial phalanges to
achieve partial hand opening and reduce complexity. The mechanism was manufactured for a
single phalange for initial testing.
Forthcoming assessment studies within a consortium of clinical partners will determine the
feasibility of the SITAR system and identify key metrics for assessment. The devices and assessment
metrics presented in this thesis will serve as building blocks for future SITAR assessment
and rehabilitation studies.