Developing a baseline for upper-body motor skill assessment using a robotic kinematic model

In the rehabilitation field, determining the effectiveness of an intervention protocol begins by comparing the individual´s movement characteristics against a baseline. In most settings, this baseline is determined through clinical studies involving a range of patients belonging to the same demographic group. Unfortunately, this leads to a process that is difficult to repeat for all patient demographics, or all movement characteristics, given the demands on clinicians´ and patients´ time for performing such clinical baseline measurement studies. To address this issue, we discuss a method that allows clinicians to objectively assess an individual´s movements and compare the resulting outcome kinematic metrics to a kinematic baseline. Instead of collecting human patient data, we propose a robotic kinematic model that generates a baseline for different kinematic parameters in real-time as a function of the state of a given task. We evaluate our methodology on elbow and shoulder range of motion (ROM) angles obtained from eleven typically developing children. We compare the user´s ROM angles to those generated by the proposed model, and discuss the potential of the model to be used in various intervention protocols.