Design and Evaluation of HumanFriendly HandHeld Gaming Interface for RobotAssisted Intuitive Telerehabilitation A testbed gaming interface operated through a handheld mobile device is designed and developed for robotassisted telerehabilitation. In the developed gaming interface, a patient needs to wear sensors (position and forcepressure sensors) at different body parts that measure kinematics and kinetics data during rehabilitation practices through some gamelike activities. The extent of rehabilitation progress is reflected through the magnitudes, patterns and expressions (such as the graphical expressions) of the kinematics and kinetics data. To do so, the kinematics and kinetics raw data are processed in realtime, expressed in different ways and displayed through the interface (e.g., mobile phone) held in the patientxe2x80x99s hand. The patient can monitor the rehabilitation progress through the graphical data expressions via the interface, interact with the display device and the rehabilitation results, and communicate the results to the healthcare providers and the patient community. To make the gaming interface humanfriendly, prior knowledge of human factors involved in the interface is considered when the interface is designed. The assessment method for each human factor is developed, and the interface is implemented and evaluated in a pilot study. The evaluation results show that the handheld gaming interface designed and developed through addressing the human factors is effective to satisfy the human factor requirements in the humandevice interaction, and to make the interaction more humanfriendly. The results can be used to optimize and benchmark the performance of the interface and of the rehabilitation system.

Investigating Human Factors in the HandHeld Gaming Interface of a Telerehabilitation Robotic System. Robotic devices can be used as effective tools to provide rehabilitation supports to stroke patients. Such robotic rehabilitation practices can replace therapists providing rehabilitation therapy to patients. Patients can independently practice rehabilitation with robotic rehabilitation devices for longer hours. These advantages are now motivating patients to use rehabilitation robots. However, contemporary rehabilitation practices are expensive, and patients need to travel to rehabilitation centers for rehabilitation, which is time consuming and burdensome. This is why, the concepts of telerehabilitation are becoming more and more popular where the patients can practice rehabilitation at homes, and the therapists can remotely monitor the rehabilitation practices and communicate with the patients if necessary. However, such rehabilitation practices, realtime monitoring of patients by therapists from distant places and communication of patients with therapists may be more intuitive and humanfriendly if the patients can operate the rehabilitation system and communicate with the therapists using a handheld interface. Again, the handheld interface may be more intuitive and engaging if the rehabilitation performance can be expressed through some gamelike activities. To do so, a clear understanding of human factors involved in the gaming interface is necessary. However, such knowledge is not available in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, in this paper, the human factors associated with the operation of a handheld gaming interface for robotassisted fullbody smart telerehabilitation of stroke patients are investigated. At first, potential human factors associated with the operation are identified through surveys conducted with healthcare professionals, researchers and patients. The identified human factors are then analyzed and divided into different categories, e.g. physical and cognitive human factors. The role of each human factor in the interface operation is explained. The findings can be utilized to design and develop handheld gaming interfaces for robotassisted telerehabilitation that may be more humanfriendly and intuitive.