A Virtual Physical Therapy Lab to Simulate a Balance Perturbation Assessment Setup

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Martinez ◽  
Praveen Shankar ◽  
Panadda Marayong ◽  
Vennila Krishnan
Keyword(s):  
Physical Therapy ◽  
User Study ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Cave System ◽  
Individualized Care ◽  
Virtual Lab ◽  
Kinematic Measures

Abstract The paper addresses the development of a virtual physical therapy lab in an immersive CAVE system (Visbox, Inc., IL) to simulate a balance perturbation experiment in a Physical Therapy (PT) setting. The primary goal is to determine if virtual reality (VR) can be effectively used for rehabilitative assessment and training instead of a physical setup. The Balance Perturbation Setup (BPS) includes a seven-and-a-half-foot apparatus with an adjustable-height pendulum and pads attached to its structure for making physical contact with a participant. This pendulum is reconfigurable and can be adjusted to the participant’s height and shoulder width. The released pendulum perturbs the participant’s upper torso at the shoulder level disturbing the upright stability of the participant. The virtual environment developed in this study utilizes Unity 3D and Blender software to recreate the BPS and the environment of the PT lab in the CAVE VR system integrated with a full body motion capture. A haptic vest equipped with tactors is developed to simulate the tactile feedback when the pendulum makes contact with the participant’s upper torso. This virtual lab for balance assessment is expected to be evaluated in a user study for its effectiveness as compared to the physical BPS setup using appropriate kinematic measures and sensors. The virtual lab has the potential to provide an alternate, highly reconfigurable method for physical therapy evaluations leading to rapid development of strategies for individualized care.

Reaching During Virtual Rotation: Context Specific Compensations for Expected Coriolis Forces

2000 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. 3230-3240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V. Cohn ◽  
Paul DiZio ◽  
James R. Lackner
Keyword(s):  
Target Location ◽  
Arm Movements ◽  
Open Loop ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Coriolis Forces ◽  
Enclosed Chamber ◽  
Path Curvature ◽  
Context Specific

Subjects who are in an enclosed chamber rotating at constant velocity feel physically stationary but make errors when pointing to targets. Reaching paths and endpoints are deviated in the direction of the transient inertial Coriolis forces generated by their arm movements. By contrast, reaching movements made during natural, voluntary torso rotation seem to be accurate, and subjects are unaware of the Coriolis forces generated by their movements. This pattern suggests that the motor plan for reaching movements uses a representation of body motion to prepare compensations for impending self-generated accelerative loads on the arm. If so, stationary subjects who are experiencing illusory self-rotation should make reaching errors when pointing to a target. These errors should be in the direction opposite the Coriolis accelerations their arm movements would generate if they were actually rotating. To determine whether such compensations exist, we had subjects in four experiments make visually open-loop reaches to targets while they were experiencing compelling illusory self-rotation and displacement induced by rotation of a complex, natural visual scene. The paths and endpoints of their initial reaching movements were significantly displaced leftward during counterclockwise illusory rotary displacement and rightward during clockwise illusory self-displacement. Subjects reached in a curvilinear path to the wrong place. These reaching errors were opposite in direction to the Coriolis forces that would have been generated by their arm movements during actual torso rotation. The magnitude of path curvature and endpoint errors increased as the speed of illusory self-rotation increased. In successive reaches, movement paths became straighter and endpoints more accurate despite the absence of visual error feedback or tactile feedback about target location. When subjects were again presented a stationary scene, their initial reaches were indistinguishable from pre-exposure baseline, indicating a total absence of aftereffects. These experiments demonstrate that the nervous system automatically compensates in a context-specific fashion for the Coriolis forces associated with reaching movements.

F2FCrowds: Planning Agent Movements to Enable Face-to-Face Interactions

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanmay Randhavane ◽  
Aniket Bera ◽  
Dinesh Manocha
Keyword(s):  
User Study ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Virtual Agents ◽  
Virtual Agent ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
Velocity Prediction ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Interaction Velocity ◽  
Full Body

The simulation of human behaviors in virtual environments has many applications. In many of these applications, situations arise in which the user has a face-to-face interaction with a virtual agent. In this work, we present an approach for multi-agent navigation that facilitates a face-to-face interaction between a real user and a virtual agent that is part of a virtual crowd. In order to predict whether the real user is approaching a virtual agent to have a face-to-face interaction or not, we describe a model of approach behavior for virtual agents. We present a novel interaction velocity prediction (IVP) algorithm that is combined with human body motion synthesis constraints and facial actions to improve the behavioral realism of virtual agents. We combine these techniques with full-body virtual crowd simulation and evaluate their benefits by conducting a user study using Oculus HMD in an immersive environment. Results of this user study indicate that the virtual agents using our interaction algorithms appear more responsive and are able to elicit more reaction from the users. Our techniques thus enable face-to-face interactions between a real user and a virtual agent and improve the sense of presence observed by the user.

scholarly journals ACTIVE-Hand: Automatic Configurable Tactile Interaction in Virtual Environment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
You Wu ◽  
Lara Schmidt ◽  
Matthew Parker ◽  
John Strong ◽  
Michael Bruns ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Feedback Systems ◽  
Tactile Interaction ◽  
Application Requirements ◽  
Virtual Interactions ◽  
Resolution Requirements

We present a novel, low-power and untethered pneumatic haptic device, namely the ACTIVE-Hand, for realistic and real-time 3D gaming experience. Currently, body-motion based 3D gaming systems primarily use visual feedback to provide partly immersive gaming experiences. Tactile feedback systems in Virtual Reality provide immersion with high tactile resolution, but they are expensive and difficult to setup and calibrate. The conceptually economical modular design of the ACTIVE-Hand allows easily configurable tactile feedback as per application requirements. Contrary to commercial systems like Wii™ which provide global vibrations as a proxy for synthetic tactile feed-back, the ACTIVE Hand is comparably lightweight, yet scalable to meet localized tactile resolution requirements. The ACTIVE-Hand provides controllable pulses for dynamic virtual interactions such as pressing virtual buttons and hitting moving virtual balls. We successfully demonstrate the paradigm of dynamic tactile interactions in virtual environments through a 3D Pong game by integrating the ACTIVE-Hand with Kinect™ camera.

scholarly journals Recent Development of Flexible Tactile Sensors and Their Applications

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Trong-Danh Nguyen ◽  
Jun Seop Lee
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Tactile Sensor ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Tactile Sensors ◽  
Large Size ◽  
Input Signals ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Health Care Monitoring

With the rapid development of society in recent decades, the wearable sensor has attracted attention for motion-based health care and artificial applications. However, there are still many limitations to applying them in real life, particularly the inconvenience that comes from their large size and non-flexible systems. To solve these problems, flexible small-sized sensors that use body motion as a stimulus are studied to directly collect more accurate and diverse signals. In particular, tactile sensors are applied directly on the skin and provide input signals of motion change for the flexible reading device. This review provides information about different types of tactile sensors and their working mechanisms that are piezoresistive, piezocapacitive, piezoelectric, and triboelectric. Moreover, this review presents not only the applications of the tactile sensor in motion sensing and health care monitoring, but also their contributions in the field of artificial intelligence in recent years. Other applications, such as human behavior studies, are also suggested.

Determination of Factors Influencing Physical Therapy Treatment Compliance

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 3244-3246
Author(s):  
Maryum Naseer Butt ◽  
Faryal Akhter ◽  
Munibah Kashif ◽  
Wajida Perveen ◽  
Muhammad Akhtar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Therapy ◽  
Treatment Compliance ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Study Patient ◽  
Term Therapy ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Physical Therapy Treatment ◽  
Therapy Sessions ◽  
Therapy Treatment

Background: Compliance to long term therapy is the extent to which a person's behavior - taking medication, following a diet or executing lifestyle changes, corresponds with agreed recommendations from a health care provider. Aim: To determine the factors influencing physical therapy treatment compliance and relation of age and gender on compliance. Study Design: Observational study. Methodology: Study conducted for 6 months in public sector hospitals of twin cities of Pakistan. Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used. Data was collected by interviewing the patients, using self-structured questionnaire. 141 patients attending physical therapy treatment in outpatient department for more than three days and willing to participate in the study, were included in the study. Patient who visited OPD for first time, pediatric patient and indoor patients were excluded. Data was analyzed by SPSS software, version 25 as qualitative variables were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Results: Most of patient could not adhere to physical therapy because of unavailability of time (60.28%), lengthy follow up (46.10%), boredom with exercise (23.4%), unavailability of respective gender (23.4%), long distance between home and hospital (20.6%), Physical contact with therapist during session (15.6%) and fear of modality (7.8%). Most patients within age group of 29-42 and 43-56 responded that frequent visits to hospital to attend multiple sessions of physical therapy were the reason they left physical therapy sessions and had unavailability of time to attend physical therapy sessions. Conclusion: We concluded that frequent visits to hospital to attend multiple sessions of physical therapy and unavailability of time are two main factors that led to poor compliance to physical therapy treatment. Keywords: Barriers, Compliance and Physical Therapy Treatment

scholarly journals Emotion Transfer for 3D Hand and Full Body Motion Using StarGAN

Computers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Jacky C. P. Chan ◽  
Edmond S. L. Ho
Keyword(s):  
User Study ◽  
Image Representation ◽  
Visual Quality ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Image Translation ◽  
Motion Sequence ◽  
Perceived Emotion ◽  
Full Body

In this paper, we propose a new data-driven framework for 3D hand and full-body motion emotion transfer. Specifically, we formulate the motion synthesis task as an image-to-image translation problem. By presenting a motion sequence as an image representation, the emotion can be transferred by our framework using StarGAN. To evaluate our proposed method’s effectiveness, we first conducted a user study to validate the perceived emotion from the captured and synthesized hand motions. We further evaluate the synthesized hand and full body motions qualitatively and quantitatively. Experimental results show that our synthesized motions are comparable to the captured motions and those created by an existing method in terms of naturalness and visual quality.

scholarly journals Towards Multi-finger Dexterous Hand Mechanics Control and Tactile Feedback

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Keyword(s):  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Kinematics And Dynamics ◽  
Robotic Hand ◽  
Space Technology ◽  
Mechanical Control ◽  
Drive Control ◽  
Dexterous Hand ◽  
End Effectors

Abstract：The ever-changing demands of industrial automation and space technology have promoted the rapid development of robotics. Traditional robotic end effectors are difficult to perform smart operations, so there is an urgent need for a robotic hand to perform complex operations instead of humans. In this article, we will focus our attention on mechanical control and haptic feedback. Mechanical control and haptic feedback are necessary conditions for the stable and accurate grasping of multi-finger dexterous hands. Tactile perception can provide stiffness and temperature to multi-finger dexterous hands. Important information makes the function of the dexterous hand more perfect. This article introduces the kinematics and dynamics of dexterous hand fingers, as well as the kinematics and dynamics solving equations, then reviews the current sensors and various control driving methods used in dexterous hands, discusses drive control, and compares each method Pros and cons. Finally, the future development of dexterous hands is predicted.

scholarly journals Graphene Based Triboelectric Nanogenerators Using Water Based Solution Process

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismael Domingos ◽  
Ana I. S. Neves ◽  
Monica F. Craciun ◽  
Helena Alves
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Short Circuit ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Solution Process ◽  
Open Circuit ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Area Network ◽  
Power Sources ◽  
Vital Signs Monitoring ◽  
Triboelectric Nanogenerators

A rapid development in personal electronics has raised challenging requirements for portable and sustainable power sources. For example, in wearable technologies, the concept of wearable body area network brings body motion and vital signs monitoring together in synergy. For this, a key aspect is sustainable portable energy, available anywhere, at any time, as generated by triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG). This technology usually demands high-cost processes and materials and still suffer from low power output, as well as unstable output values due to charge generating stimulus with variable intensities. In this work, we present TENGs using shear exfoliated graphene as electrodes as well as active triboelectric layer deposited by a simple solution process. Graphene in combination with polymers such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) were used to produce TENG devices using low-cost solution processing methods. Device electrical power generation was tested with a cyclic physical stimulus for better control and understanding of device output. The triboelectric response of these materials showed open circuit voltages (Voc) and short-circuit currents (Isc)of approximately 233 V and 731 nA respectively when stimulated at 1.5 Hz. A power density of 13.14 μW/cm2 under a load of 200 MΩ was achieved, which can be 40 times higher when compared to devices made with aluminum and PDMS. These results demonstrate the potential of solution process for low-cost triboelectric devices for self-sustainable wearable portable nanogenerators on health and security applications using contact and positional sensors.

scholarly journals Intuitive Spatial Tactile Feedback for Better Awareness about Robot Trajectory during Human–Robot Collaboration

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 5748
Author(s):  
Stefan Grushko ◽  
Aleš Vysocký ◽  
Dominik Heczko ◽  
Zdenko Bobovský
Keyword(s):  
User Study ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Coordinate Frame ◽  
Subjective Data ◽  
Directional Information ◽  
Notification System ◽  
Robot Trajectory ◽  
Human Robot Collaboration

In this work, we extend the previously proposed approach of improving mutual perception during human–robot collaboration by communicating the robot’s motion intentions and status to a human worker using hand-worn haptic feedback devices. The improvement is presented by introducing spatial tactile feedback, which provides the human worker with more intuitive information about the currently planned robot’s trajectory, given its spatial configuration. The enhanced feedback devices communicate directional information through activation of six tactors spatially organised to represent an orthogonal coordinate frame: the vibration activates on the side of the feedback device that is closest to the future path of the robot. To test the effectiveness of the improved human–machine interface, two user studies were prepared and conducted. The first study aimed to quantitatively evaluate the ease of differentiating activation of individual tactors of the notification devices. The second user study aimed to assess the overall usability of the enhanced notification mode for improving human awareness about the planned trajectory of a robot. The results of the first experiment allowed to identify the tactors for which vibration intensity was most often confused by users. The results of the second experiment showed that the enhanced notification system allowed the participants to complete the task faster and, in general, improved user awareness of the robot’s movement plan, according to both objective and subjective data. Moreover, the majority of participants (82%) favoured the improved notification system over its previous non-directional version and vision-based inspection.

scholarly journals Empirica: a virtual lab for high-throughput macro-level experiments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah Almaatouq ◽  
Joshua Becker ◽  
James P. Houghton ◽  
Nicolas Paton ◽  
Duncan J. Watts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Throughput ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Online Research ◽  
Virtual Labs ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Barriers To Innovation ◽  
Development Platform ◽  
Lab Experiments ◽  
Virtual Lab

AbstractVirtual labs allow researchers to design high-throughput and macro-level experiments that are not feasible in traditional in-person physical lab settings. Despite the increasing popularity of online research, researchers still face many technical and logistical barriers when designing and deploying virtual lab experiments. While several platforms exist to facilitate the development of virtual lab experiments, they typically present researchers with a stark trade-off between usability and functionality. We introduce Empirica: a modular virtual lab that offers a solution to the usability–functionality trade-off by employing a “flexible defaults” design strategy. This strategy enables us to maintain complete “build anything” flexibility while offering a development platform that is accessible to novice programmers. Empirica’s architecture is designed to allow for parameterizable experimental designs, reusable protocols, and rapid development. These features will increase the accessibility of virtual lab experiments, remove barriers to innovation in experiment design, and enable rapid progress in the understanding of human behavior.

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