Rutgers University BREL

Introduction & Background

The Hand-Arm Rehabilitation Interface attaches to a standard office chair, allowing for personal administration of rehabilitation protocols.

    Recovery of upper-limb function after central paralysis is an uphill battle that can sometimes be won through intensive repetitions of task-oriented exercises. To help clients with the exercises , we developed the Hand-Arm Rehabilitation Interface (HARI), a tool that guides the arm passively through task-specific reaching motions whil providing biofeedback of muscular effort. In HARI, an alternative sensory interface, force myography (FMG) registers muscle activity with an array of pressure sensors that can be donned by the user. The FMG method operates on the principle that an array of sensors placed over the major muscle groups provides a vectorial (composite) signal whose interpretation can be trained by user volition. With FMG, HARI is a simple, portable device that can allow patients with minimal residual muscle activity in one arm to assess key muscle responses with minimal assistance and use them as display for biofeedback or to control functional devices. Presently the HARI is being investigated for its utility in chronic stroke rehabilitation in a Phase II clinical trial at the JFK-Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, Edison NJ.