Robotic assisted rehabilitation in virtual reality with the L-EXOS

www.percro.org This paper presents the results of a clinical trial employing the PERCRO L-Exos (Light-Exoskeleton) system, which is a 5-DoF force-feedback exoskeleton for the right arm, for robotic-assisted rehabilitation. The device has demonstrated itself suitable for robotic arm rehabilitation therapy when integrated with a Virtual Reality (VR) system. Three different schemes of therapy in VR have been tested in the clinical evaluation trial, which was conducted at the Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa with nine chronic stroke patients. The results of this clinical trial, both in terms of patients performance improvements in the proposed exercises and in terms of improvements in the standard clinical scales which have been used to monitor patients progresses will be reported and discussed throughout the paper. The evaluation both pre and post-therapy was carried out with both clinical and quantitative measurements with EMG and motion data; the latter ones measured in terms of different kinetic parameters estimated through the online data logged during the repeated sessions of exercise. It is to be noted that statistically significant improvements have been demonstrated in terms of Fugl-Meyer scores, Ashworth scale, increments of active and passive ranges of motion on shoulder, elbow and wrist joints of the impaired limb, active and passive, and quantitative indexes, such as task time and error, synergies and smoothness of movement. 1