Evaluation of an Upper-Limb Rehabilitation Robotic Device for Home Use from Patient Perspective

This paper presents a user study to evaluate the system’s performance by measuring objective indicators and subjective perception between the two versions of a planar rehabilitation robotic device: (i) PupArm system, called RoboTherapist 2D system for commercial purpose, designed and developed for clinical settings; and (ii) Homerehab system, developed for home use. Homerehab system is a home rehabilitation robotic platform developed inside the EU HOMEREHAB-Echord++ project framework. Nine patients with different neurological disorders participate in the study. Based on the analysis of subjective assessments of usability and the data acquired objectively by the robotic devices, we can conclude that the performance and user experience with both systems are very similar. This finding will be the base of more extensively studies to demonstrate that home-therapy with HomeRehab could be as efficient as therapy in clinical settings assisted by PupArm robot.