Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life, Vol. 1, No. 2 (September 2014), 130-134

Glove-Based Virtual Interaction for the Rehabilitation of Hemiparesis Stroke Patient
Khairunizam Wan, Aswad A.R., Rashidah Suhaimi and Nazrul H. Adnan

Advanced Intelligent Computing and Sustainability Research
School of Mechatronic, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Malaysia
khairunizam@unimap.edu.myD. Hazry, Zuradzman M. Razlan and Shahriman A.B.

Centre of Excellence for Unmanned Aerial Systems (COEUAS)
Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Malaysia
Mohd Asri Ariffin and Haslina M

School of Health Science,Kampus Kesihatan Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract
This paper proposes the rehabilitation of a stroke patient by using dataglove called GloveMAP. GloveMAP is a low
cost hand glove developed by using the flexible bending sensor and an accelerometer attached at the position of thefingers and wrist, respectively. In the studies, 22 fundamental movements of arm are evaluated and the results areemployed to design the virtual environment. The combination of these fundamental movements focuses on
Hemiparesis sufferers which are the most common in the stroke and have the inability to move one side of thebody. The experimental results show the preliminary studies to investigate muscle activities. The research outcomesare used to design the rehabilitation based virtual environment (VR).
Keywords: Dataglove, Virtual Reality (VR), rehabilitation, stroke.

1. Introduction
Strokes have been one of the major causes for long term
disability. Death cases from stroke have decreased
considerably but the survivors usually have to live withsome form of disability. Given stroke cause damage tothe brain by forming blood clot in the brain artery, thecomplexity of the brain may affect the stroke patient invarious forms [1, 2, 3].
Virtual Reality (VR) is a digital environment which canbe fully manipulated by the respective party. VR has its
various function in today’s development in medical area
which most have been used by the doctor for surgery
simulation and also for psychological therapy for themind. As it stand VR has serve its purpose in thedevelopment of this project for rehabilitation of thestroke patient [4-7].

This paper proposes the impairment of the stroke patient
to rehabilitate by using VR approach. The study
includes the research in investigation of muscle
activities where the rehabilitation takes place.
This research paper organized as subsequent; Section 2
encompasses literature review of the related research
and approach toward VR based stroke therapy. Section
3 presents the methodologies of applied procedures.
Section 4 is divided into 2 sections, first section states
about experiment setup where second section
demonstrates the results of experiments. Finally section
5 expresses the conclusions over current research.
2. Literature review
Worldwide stroke is the second leading cause of death,
responsible for 4.4 million or equivalent to 9 % of thetotal 50.5 million deaths each year, and only 10 %recover almost completely while some other survivor

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have to live with few disability or impairment. Thus thisstroke patient needs special care and rehabilitation to
gain back their body function. Most people over 55
years of age and with a male gender of family history ofstroke could be one of many vital factor risk of getting astroke.
Nowadays exists various application of the VR whichhave make rise to the development of interfacing
devices such as dataglove, head-mounted display(HMD) and mechanical suit [6,8]. The application has
various usages in the development therapy for thedisability patient such as stroke patient. In this modern
age lots of equipment have been develop for this VRapplications. Though this technique requires a high cost
to develop thus a lot improvement can still be made forthis VR application.
Therapy by using VR is widely used in the society byintegrating perceptions and experience within asimulation for the phobic patient. Rehabilitation can bemade easy for the stroke patient as VR can help in
attaining portable rehab center by remotely control thevirtual exercise for the patient. Furthermore VR creates
an environment where all objects can be createddigitally allowing the user or patient to interact with thevirtual object by using external hardware.
In this research, the dataglove called GloveMAP is usedby the stroke patient to interact with the VR
environments [9-11]. The most challenging part will be
the designation of the virtual object installed in thevirtual environments. The consultations from themedical doctor and the stroke therapist are required inorder to design VR based stroke rehabilitation
environments.

3.1. Hemiparesis Stroke
Hemiparesis stroke attacks when blood flow to the brain
stopped. The oxygen and blood that supply to the brain
will stop which result in the damage of the brain which
can affect the important body parts that control daily
activities. Hemiparesis sufferer will experience one sideof weakness. They often experience balance
impairments which cause difficulties to performmovements such as grabbing objects, drinking from aglass, eating and using bathroom. The loss of abilities
of movements due to stroke depends on the brain injury
area.
Arm movement
Analysis

MOCAP

EMG

#VR Environment#Consultation from the stroke therapy required(a)Dataglove

VR Environment

3. Research methodologies

Rehabilitation

Fig. 1 shows the flow chart of the proposed methods.
The proposed works are divided into 2 parts, which are
the design of the Virtual Reality (VR) environments andthe rehabilitation therapist [9]. Several preliminary
experiments are conducted to design the VR
environments. The purpose is to investigate the best
sequence of arm movements for the rehabilitation
purpose. In the rehabilitation process, the stroke patient
has an option to choose the VR environments, which issuitable to their stage of the stroke.

(b)
Fig.1. (a) Designing the VR environment (b) Rehabilitation
therapy3.2. Fundamental Movements in Stroke Rehab
3.2.1. Rotational Angles of Human Arm
Human arm consist of 7 DOF which are located at theshoulder, elbow and wrist. Shoulder part has 3 DOF forpitch, yaw and roll. While the elbow only has 1 DOF
which make it can bend up and down. Finally the wristthat has 3 DOF for bending up and down, side to side

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deviation and twisting which make a total of 7 DOF forhuman arm [12].
Anatomical movements for hemiparesis stroke consistof several general movements that involve the shoulder,elbow, wrist and fingers. The movement carry out must
be in correct range of motion to avoid injury during
rehabilitation. Muscle is the tissues that provide
movement for human body structure and the movement
are classified by the direction of movement by theaffected structures. Movements beyond the normal limit
will be added with the prefix hyper-such as hyper
flexion and hyper extension. Such movements are very
important in medical field. General anatomical motion
with its opposites includes flexion, extension,abduction, adduction, internal rotation, external rotation,elevation and depression

platform of the VR system. Quest3D is the software fordeveloping real-time 3D Microsoft Windows
applications. It’s consists of only a few high levelsoftware tools and almost all tasks are performed
identical to the hardware. By using the softwaredevelopment kit, users can build their own components
for Quest3D and build support for specific hardware
likes dataglove. The Virtual Reality Peripheral Network(VRPN) will be used to interface the dataglove with theVR environment and Head Mounted Display (HMD).
VRPN is a zero cost, open source tool that can handle
many VR devices.
4. Experiments
4.1. Experimental setup

3.3. Arm kinematics
Flexion and extension are the motion of adjusting angle
between two parts by bending or straightening the parts.
While, abduction and adduction are adjusting relation to
midline of the body by pulling the body structure away
or toward the midline, the abduction and adduction of
the wrist are called as radial and ulnar deviation.
Internal and external rotations are rotating the bodyparts inwards or outwards. The movements of adjusting
the elevation in superior or inferior direction areelevation and depression. Special motions for hands andfeet are pronation and supination which are the rotationof the forearm.
Human arm structure shows the rotational angles ofshoulder and elbow define as yaw, pitch and roll. 3 DOF
at the shoulder define the pitch angle β which is therotation around y-axis for pronation and supination, yawangle α which is the rotation around z-axis for abduction
and adduction, while flexion and extension stand for rollangle γ which rotate around x-axis. The DOF at theelbow must be considered as two which are the pitch
and roll angle, however pronation and supination will
not change the hand position. A single transformation
matrix can be formed by calculating the combination ofeulerian angles in the order of Y-X-Y and Z-X-Z andthe angles can be computed.

ƟFig. 2. The subject perform the fundamental movement

Table 1. The location of marker placement
Location
ID Number
ShoulderP1
Elbow
P2WristP3
Trapezium
P4Index
P5Middle
P6No.
123456

P1

P4P5

3.4. Virtual Reality (VR) software

P6Since this project needs to do the virtual rehabilitation
therapy, the proposed software is Quest3D which is a

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P2
P3
Fig. 3. Position of the 6 markers

In the experiments, 1 subject was selected to performthe fundamental movements of the arm as shown in Fig.
2. The movements were captured by using the motion
capture system Qualisys Track Manager (QTM)
software. The QTM was calibrated each time in theexperiment to reduce the tolerance of the 3D
measurement. Six markers were attached to the rightarm of the subject, which was at the location of shoulder,elbow, wrist, and fingers (Index and middle) as shownin Fig. 3.
4.2. Experimental results
Shoulder Abduction
position (mm)

(a)

600
40020000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10time (s)angle (degrees)

Shoulder Abduction
0-20-40-60-80-100

Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the MOSTI Science Fund
Research Grant (MOSTI: 9005-00059) awarded by theMinistry of Education, Malaysia and Innovation toUniMAP.
References

1000800

portable stroke rehabilitation therapy device could bedeveloped in the future. As the future work, thefunctional movements of the arm will be furtherinvestigated.

(b)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10time (s)Fig. 4. Experimental results (a) Position for shoulder
abduction (b) angle of shoulder abduction
Fig. 4(a) shows the markers at the position of shoulder(P1) and elbow (P2) experienced very little movement
while the markers at the position of wrist (P3), index
finger (P5) and middle finger (P6) show significant
movement which about 250 mm of the vector
magnitude.
5. Conclusions
The paper proposes the rehabilitation therapy of thestroke patient by interacting dataglove with the VRenvironments. Preliminary experiments are conducted toinvestigate the motion sequence of the arm by using
MOCAP and EMG sensors for the purpose of designing
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