Development of a Systems Architecture for Robot-Aided Telerehabilitation

This paper presents a pilot study carried out in our Rehabilitation Institute to verify the feasibility of implementation of a telerehabilitation approach based on the use of robotic devices for upper limb treatment. Its application was tested only in the clinical environment. The systems architecture implemented consists of three rehabilitation stations and a supervision workstation, located in different laboratories, and interconnected by means of a standard Ethernet II network. The systems architecture was tested during the rehabilitation of four patients after chronic stroke. The performance charts showed a typical increasing/decreasing trend of the parameters measured by the robot devices, indicating a continuous improvement of the patient's performance throughout treatment similar to that obtained in controlled laboratory conditions. The telerehabilitation approach should thus allow to optimize the therapeutic intervention, despite the fact that the patient does not directly interact with the therapist.