Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), in collaboration with Escuela Politécnica del Ecuador and the ASEPEYO hospitals in Barcelona and Madrid, has developed a system of exercise video games (or exergames) that promotes the rehabilitation of people with mobility problems in their hands and wrists. The system also provides data to therapists so that they can analyse their patients’ progress during the recovery stage.
The two video games, called “Peter Jumper” and “Andromeda”, have been developed on the free Unity platform and are arcade-type games (i.e., games similar to arcade machines). Their aim is to make the physical activity of the injured limb rewarding, generating motivation so that the patient can become more involved in the treatment and enhance the results of the rehabilitation.
In addition to the software, the system is composed of a specialized electromechanical controller, called “eJamar”, which is capable of measuring, through specialized sensors, the entire range of motion of the hand and wrist, as well as the patient's grip strength. The system, in turn, is able to store this information during each session, so that a specialist can consult the patient's condition and check their progress over time, automatically recording metrics (strength profiles, fatigue, reaction times, etc.) that cannot be obtained using traditional methods. A paper on the development of this system was recently published in the scientific journal Applied Sciences.
During the initial phase of the research, the researchers identified certain requirements that had not been met by traditional upper extremity rehabilitation treatments. “We realized that training games (or serious games) were being used to support rehabilitation treatments, but that there were very few physical devices dedicated to promoting hand mobility and improving grip strength. So, it was precisely from this vacuum that the idea of designing a device to meet this need arose”, explains one of the study's authors, Andrés Fernando Cela Rosero, from the UC3M Department of Systems Engineering and Automation.
The system, funded by Roboasset, i-REHAB project, which in turn is supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and co-financed by the European Union and iRoboCity2030-CM, which is supported by the R&D Activity Programmes in the Community of Madrid, has been approved by doctors and specialized personnel so that this rehabilitation technology is easy to implement in routine clinical practice. “In fact, we have already completed a series of tests with patients in rehabilitation stages and the results are very encouraging”, says another of the researchers, Edwin Daniel Oña Simbaña, also from the UC3M Department of Systems Engineering and Automation. “In this way, by combining a traditional treatment with 30 minutes of exercises with our exergames, patients have improved both their range of motion and their grip strength by up to 100%”, he adds.
Another advantage of this device is that it can be used in a wide range of cases, from fractures or hand injuries to neurological pathologies such as stroke, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease.
In turn, given the simplicity of the system, the researchers believe that these interactive video games can be a useful tool for telerehabilitation, as they can contribute to reducing the waiting list for patients to access these treatments. For this reason, the authors of the study encourage both health entities and users to try this technology in order to continue working in this line of research.
Video: https://youtu.be/XTqtEGaFCvw