Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Stroke is a leading cause of death and adult neurological disability in Canada with approximately 50,000 cases of strokeoccurring every year and about 315,000 Canadians currently living with the effects of stroke. It has been estimated thatstroke costs the Canadian economy almost 3.6 billion dollars a year. Approximately 90% of stroke sufferers experiencepermanent or long-lasting disability and require labour-intensive movement therapy as early as possible following stroke,placing a significant burden on therapists and the healthcare system. This project proposes a way to address this problemthrough the development of robotic and haptic (sense of touch) technologies for enabling post-stroke rehabilitation ofpatients.Because of their ability to provide reproducible, and controlled movements, robots have been used in recent years forrehabilitation of the arm, wrist, finger, gait, and posture following stroke. Incorporation of haptics introduces an additionalfeature in rehabilitation therapy that of force, in addition to motion. The result is a haptics-enabled robotic system whereforce and motion data are transferred between the therapist and the patient. This type of bilateral interaction enables thepatient to receive feedback directly from the therapist as well as the robot with which he or she is interacting resulting inconcurrent interactive participation of the therapist with the patient during the therapy. This allows the therapist to not onlyobserve the motions generated by the patient but also to feel the forces that the patient exerts via the haptic interface. Theavailability of force and motion data during rehabilitation therapy makes it possible to develop performance measures forassessing the level of impairment and the effect of rehabilitation. The proposed research will focus on developing hapticsenabledrobotic systems for post-stroke rehabilitation and evaluate their effectiveness via a set of patient-oriented exercises.