Wearable Absolute 6 DOF Exercise Training System for Post Stroke Rehabilitation

This paper introduces a multidisciplinary research effort to design an interactive, real time system to assist rehabilitation of stroke patients. The proposed system aims to help stroke survivors with limited mobility to relearn lost skills and regain maximal functional independence. The system assesses the quality of exercise being performed and provides advisory feedback to the patient in order to enable task specific training and correct motor relearning. The system uses a novel, ambulatory and wearable 6 Degree of Freedom (DOF) motion capture system composed of miniature ultrasonic and inertial sensors. The system captures the 3D kinematic parameters of the subject¿s movement while performing exercise, enabling tele-medicine applications or subsequent review by clinical experts. The paper presents the architecture of the aforementioned system and results from early stages of the research.