DESIGN AND TEST OF AN AUTONOMOUS RECONFIGURABLE DYNAMIC INVESTIGATION TEST-RIG ON HAPTICS (ARDITA) FOR PRE-SCREENING OF THE PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHY DISEASES

摘要

This work presents a new device ARDITA (Autonomous Re-configurable Dynamic Investigation Test-rig on hAptics) that is able to indent the fingertip with sinusoidal waves. Its reconfig-urability permits to change these waves in amplitude, spatial and timing frequencies. The device is designed in order to be autonomous and reconfigurable, but also the portability and the size were taken into account, because the clinicians had to move it from an hospital to the other one and because each patient arms has a different size. In this work, the authors applied this feature to investigate the relationship between the tactile sensitivity of index and little finger both in healthy people and people who suffer peripheral neuropathies as the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). The last ones were examined also with the Electromyography (EMG). 40 healthy people and 17 ill patients were tested. The results showed that ARDITA determined not only the index and little finger performance were inverted in patients respect to the subject, but also the increment of incorrect responses were perfected correlated with the increment of the degree of the illness.