Smart Home Care and assistive Technology – Dissertation Proposal

2. OVERVIEW
 Final Project Idea
 Similar Projects / Inspiration
 Future Plans
 Project Timeline
 References

3. FINAL PROJECT IDEA
 I want to explore how assistive technologies can be used to augment the life
of a stroke victim in their home.
 Explore the areas of occupational and physical therapy to improve everyday
tasks for the stroke victim and help them return to independent living.
 Proprioception – How can this affect walk and other activities? (Niessen
2008)
 Therapy leads to the acquisition of “muscle memory”, motivation.

4. WHERE IT SHOULD BE USED?
 In the home – Stroke Victim with limited mobility use of left hand and
leg.
 Kitchen
 Livingroom
 Hallway and all walking areas – Improve walking technique
 Gardening
 Feeding animals
 Bringing out the bins
 Outside of the Home – Stroke Victim with limited mobility use of left hand
and leg.
 Going on holidays/travelling

5. SIMILAR PROJECTS / INSPIRATION

6.  The design of a haptic exercise for post-stroke arm rehabilitation
- E Lövquist and U Dreifaldt
 To make an exercise encouraging, stimulating, engaging and playable for a
stroke patient
 Immersive workbench and a PHANTOM Omni
 Informed by medical doctors, physiotherapists and occupational therapists.
 “The Rutgers ankle” (Boian et al. (2002)

8.  Wiihabilitation
 Addresses impaired range of motion in the wrist as a result of stroke.
 Rehabilitation of Wrist Flexion and Extension Using a Wiimote-Based Game
System
 Using a two directional game (right-and-left)
 The idea is to keep the activity interesting to patients, but will patients of all
ages be interested in games?

9. FUTURE PLANS

10.  Carry out more qualitative research in the home.
 Observational Methods.
 Explore the idea with physiotherapist.
 Elicit requirements and draw up design solution to problem identified.
 Sketches, Storyboard, Scenarios.
 Build prototype of suggested design.
 Test prototype and use an iterative process to modify prototype based on test
results.

11. POSSIBLE TECHNOLOGY
 Arduino – Along with sensors could be used to assess walk. Leg position,
proximity to wall and obstacles.
 PD – Pure Data could be used to manage data coming from the Arduino and
sensors. Combined with Processing, visuals of progress can be displayed
and recorded.
 Wiimote – Contains accelerometer and multiple buttons for user options.
 Robotics
 Haptics

12. PROJECT TIMELINE

13. REFERENCES
• Boian et al. (2003), Haptic Effects for Virtual Reality-based Post-Stroke
Rehabilitation., Proceedings of the11th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for
Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems (HAPTICS’03)
• Decker, J., Li, H., Losowyj, D., & Prakash, V. (2009). Wiihabilitation:
rehabilitation of wrist flexion and extension using a wiimote-based game
system. Governor's School of Engineering and Technology Research Journal.
• Lövquist, E., & Dreifaldt, U. (2006). The design of a haptic exercise for post-
stroke arm rehabilitation. In Proc. 6th Intl Conf. on Disability, Virtual Reality
and Assoc. Technologies, Esbjerg, Denmark, September (pp. 18-20).
• Niessen, M. H., Veeger, D. H., Koppe, P. A., Konijnenbelt, M. H., van Dieën,
J., & Janssen, T. W. (2008). Proprioception of the shoulder after stroke.
Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation, 89(2), 333-338.