Robotic rehabilitation tasks and measurements of psychophysiological responses

—Rehabilitation robots, together with vision and audio systems form the multimodal environment for exercising the person in a number of ways, unavoidably influencing the physiological state of the subject. This paper examines viability of measuring psycho physiological responses to different robotic tasks. The heart rate, skin conductance, respiration and peripheral skin temperature were observed to verify if physical activity obstructs useful recordings and to verify responses in stroke population. 30 healthy subjects were checked with a control task, a purely mental task and task with physical load. 23 subacute stroke persons did a control task, pick and place task (+ inverted version) and Stroop test, same as 22 healthy control subjects. Psycho physiological measurements yielded results even in the presence of physical load and can thus potentially be useful for rehabilitation robotics. Similar responses as in healthy control group were found in the stroke group. Skin conductance ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Marko Munih, Domen Novak, Jaka Ziherl, Andrej Olensek, Janez Podobnik, Tadej Bajd, Matjaz Mihelj
• Keywords: Control Task, ICRA 2010, Robotics, Skin Conductance, Skin Temperature