Proceedings of the ASME 2010 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference IDETC/CIE 2010 August 15-18, 2010, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DETC2010-28529
SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT FOR “DESIGN REQUIREMENTS FOR A TENDON REHABILITATION ROBOT: RESULTS FROM A SURVEY OF ENGINEERS AND HEALTH PROFESSIONALS”
Gul Kremer The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania, USA E-mail: gkremer@psu.edu
Volkan Patoglu Gurdal Ertek ∗ Ozgur Oz Deniz Zoroglu Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences Sabanci University Orhanli, Tuzla 34956, Istanbul, Turkey Email: ertekg@sabanciuniv.edu
Appendix A: Literature and Research on Hand and Finger Exoskeletons A careful literature survey by the authors revealed that the majority of the literature reports the developed robots from a purely mechanical engineering point of view. In this group of studies, a brief description of the health problem is followed by a detailed description of the robot’s components and the mechanical working principles. A small percentage of these studies also report results from usability studies [1] [2], which are essential in the assessment of the developed robots. These studies collect data during the rehabilitation process through electronic data collection devices, compute movement performance measures, and then analyze whether the robot meets clinical assessment measures [3]. Even fewer studies are found to report findings from interviews and surveys carried out with the patients and health professionals. Yet, carrying out a survey before the usability study has the advantage of increasing the safety of the robot. [4] presents a recent review of the survey-based assessment studies in literature. The earliest studies with user surveys on rehabilitation robots are by Dijkers et al. [5] and Stanger et al. [6]. Dijkers et al. [5] combine data from usability tests and surveys with pa-
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tients and therapists for assessing a robot for post-stroke rehabilitation. Their study suggests that “therapists can adjust quickly to working effectively with this type of sophisticated equipment.” Stanger et al. [6] review nine task priority surveys conducted in England and North America on rehabilitation robots. Four of the surveys are carried out prior to the development of the robot, whereas the five others are carried out after a prototype has been developed. Hammel [7] describes how robots developed at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Stanford University are assessed. The assessment process has three phases: Conceptual brainstorming, clinical feasibility testing, and viability testing (evaluation in everyday performance contexts). Muras et al. [8] survey only patients, identifying areas in which there is demand for assistive technologies. Lee et al. [9] survey the opinions of only therapists on rehabilitation robots, without introducing a specific robotic system. Coote and Stokes [10] and Holt et al. [4] survey both therapists and patients on an upper-limb rehabilitation robots. Our paper follows a data analysis approach similar to that of [4], distinguishing between quantitative and qualitative questions. In contrast to the mentioned studies, our paper focuses especially on the mechanical design of the robot, including detailed querying of its mechanisms, since the second group of respondents consists of engineers. The ASME paper describes the finger exoskeleton devel1