Investigating human factors in the hand-held gaming interface of a telerehabilitation robotic system

Abstract

Robotic devices can be used as effective tools to provide rehabilitation supports to stroke patients. Such robotic rehabilitation practices can replace therapists providing rehabilitation therapy to patients. Patients can independently practice rehabilitation with robotic rehabilitation devices for longer hours. These advantages are now motivating patients to use rehabilitation robots. However, contemporary rehabilitation practices are expensive, and patients need to travel to rehabilitation centers for rehabilitation, which is time consuming and burdensome. This is why, the concepts of telerehabilitation are becoming more and more popular where the patients can practice rehabilitation at homes, and the therapists can remotely monitor the rehabilitation practices and communicate with the patients if necessary. However, such rehabilitation practices, real-time monitoring of patients by therapists from distant places and communication of patients with therapists may be more intuitive and human-friendly if the patients can operate the rehabilitation system and communicate with the therapists using a hand-held interface. Again, the hand-held interface may be more intuitive and engaging if the rehabilitation performance can be expressed through some game-like activities. To do so, a clear understanding of human factors involved in the gaming interface is necessary. However, such knowledge is not available in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, in this paper, the human factors associated with the operation of a hand-held gaming interface for robot-assisted full-body smart telerehabilitation of stroke patients are investigated. At first, potential human factors associated with the operation are identified through surveys conducted with healthcare professionals, researchers and patients. The identified human factors are then analyzed and divided into different categories, e.g. physical and cognitive human factors. The role of each human factor in the interface operation is explained. The findings can be utilized to design and develop hand-held gaming interfaces for robot-assisted telerehabilitation that may be more human-friendly and intuitive.