Hands - off Robotics for Post - Stroke Arm Rehabilitation JON ERIKSSON Master ’ s Degree Project Stockholm , Sweden 2004

This report describes the design of an autonomous mobile assistant robot, which helps post-stroke patients during their rehabilitation by providing encouragement, reminders, and support. Studies show that the prevalence of stroke will increase in the future and since post-stroke patients need supervision by trained professionals, the rehabilitation needs to be made more efficient. Toward this goal, we offer a robot as a complement to conventional physical therapy. The robot navigates autonomously in the environment and monitors the patient’s arm activity. By communicating through speech, body language, and its behavior, the robot helps the patient remember to follow a rehabilitation program. The speed of recovery of a motor disability greatly depends on the patient’s amount of exercise and use of the affected limb. Thus the use of this robot may help increase the chance of recovery in post-stroke rehabilitation. Our experiments show that poststroke patients are positive about this approach and also that a more animated robot behavior is perceived as more nice and encouraging. En robot för armrehabilitering efter stroke