Investigating the Effect of Virtual Reality Environment and Intelligent Control Panel on the Rehabilitation of Upper Limb

Introduction: Occupational therapy and performing specific motor activities are among the healing processes for injured people that should be followed by patients in need after the doctor’s prescription. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of using virtual reality environments and interacting with hardware designed for the treatment and rehabilitation of patients with upper limb injuries. Method: In this study, the design and manufacturing process consisted of two parts: software and hardware. In the software section, in order to access the virtual reality environment under the Windows operating system, the virtual reality environment was designed and coded and then the connection to the hardware and microcontroller section of the Arduino board was provided so that commands could be exported from the controller to the virtual reality environment and depending on the mouse motion, a movement in the virtual environment would be made. Results: Given the nature of this research, the criteria proposed by Martilla and James were used to evaluate the software. Moreover, Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NRS) was used to measure the effect of this method on reducing pain and the performance of virtual reality environment in reducing pain was evaluated. Conclusion: The results showed that using virtual reality for rehabilitation, with accordance to the type of graphics provided and the hardware designed, in addition to reducing treatment time and pain level, encourages the patients to use the software and continue the activities in a place other than the clinic.