Characterization and wearability evaluation of a fully portable wrist exoskeleton for unsupervised training after stroke

摘要

Stroke affects approximately 795’000 people each year in the US alone and is one of the leading causes of long-term adult disability and dependency [1]. Traditional stroke rehabilitation options for outpatients include therapist-based treatments with hands-on physical and occupational therapy in rehabilitation centres. The treatment lasts several weeks and is composed of periodic blocked practice, but overall training time remains low compared to the time the patient is inactive at home [2, 3]. Moreover, stroke patients are discharged at an increasingly early stage [4, 5] requiring new approaches for rehabilitation training in unsupervised settings. These novel approaches must be effective [6, 7], and empower patients to self-initiate rehabilitation training that will enable more distributed sessions. This is particularly important since, in the future, more rehabilitation resources will be moved to community settings and patient homes to complement conventional therapy [8–11].