A Tele-robotic System for Real-Time Remote Evaluation of Upper-Limb Function

Telehealth assistive technologies constitute a very promising field to improve quality of life. Teleoperated from a distant location, a robot device can become a beneficial tool in health applications, to allow physical remote interaction between specialized personal and a patient. This paper aims at presenting a teleoperated, powered, robotic exoskeleton-based system for real-time evaluation of upper limb function. The telerobotic platform consists in hardware and software for "remote assessment". The system provides measurements of joint angles at the elbow and wrist level and interaction force between exoskeleton and patient. A set of experiments was carried out to evaluate the system, and preliminary results shows feasibility of remote evaluation.