iRest: Interactive rehabilitation and assessment tool

The ability to perform activities of daily living such as eating, drinking or writing is limited after a stroke. Rehabilitation is to encourage the recovery process and to define effective rehabilitation procedures, quantitative assessment should be included. Conventional assessment scales such as Fugl-Meyer and Motor Assessment Scale have several limitations as the scales are subjective, provide only rough estimates, and are highly dependent on the ability of the trained physiotherapist; making it difficult to quantify impairment and disability. Using these methods, small changes due to stroke are often undetected. Therefore, precise and objective measurement of motor impairment is needed to monitor and quantify the patient´s progress. This paper presents the design and development of an interactive rehabilitation and assessment tool, iRest. This system does not use any robotic actuator but only uses a small DC motor to generate vibration. Three robotic assessment modules were developed as a virtual reality (VR) environments namely Draw I, Draw Diamond and Draw Circle. The design of this VR considers the required movement in activities of daily living, including isolated and combined movements.