Intercontinental bilateral teleoperation applied to remote elbow assessment of patients post stroke

Bilateral teleoperation technology is promising to enable remote assessment for patients in remote location. In this paper intercontinental bilateral teleoperation between National institutes of health in USA and Seoul national university Bundang hospital in Korea is implemented for remote assessment of impaired elbow with patients post stroke. Three assessment tasks, passive ROM test, muscle strength test, and spasticity test, were conducted by using a bilateral teleoperation system, which includes the master/slave devices and bilateral control law. Through clinical test with twelve stroke patients, the real-time remote assessment was evaluated by comparing clinical results of remote assessment and in-person assessment.