Soft Sensing and Actuation for Upper Limb Rehabilitation

Summary

Strokes are a major healthcare problem for UK, and around 150,000 people have a stroke in UK every year. Almost three quarters of them experience upper-limb extremities and require a long period of active rehabilitation to partially restore functionality of the paretic limbs. However, effective rehabilitation requires long, intense, frequent, and task-specific therapy sessions, but the cost and limited availability of therapists have prevented these requirements from being met to a satisfactory level. To solve this problem, this project proposes a soft sensing and actuation system to minimise the involvement of therapists and deliver therapeutic exercise automatically at patients’ daily living environment.

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