Smart Objects in Rehabilitation

Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide, and home-based solutions at low costs are required to provide effective rehabilitation to patients and decrease the economic burden. The interactive objects are one of the components of the RETRAINER system, and we exploited them to produce a stand-alone home rehabilitation tool. Patients own objects are equipped with RF sensitive tags and an antenna connected to a RF reader is placed on patient’s hand. Using the relation between the distance of RF sources and the RSSI the contact with the object is detected and the task completion is identified. A backend system autonomously guides the execution of the exercises designed by therapists and record the data about the performance of the execution. Preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and show a good degree of acceptability by patients and clinicians.