Using UHF RFID properties to develop and optimize an upper-limb rehabilitation system

Rehabilitation of the upper limb is an important aspect of the therapy for people affected by neuromotor diseases for the recovery of the capability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs). Nonetheless, the costs associated with the administration of rehabilitation therapy and the increasing number of patients highlight the need for new solutions. Technology-based solutions and, in particular, telerehabilitation could strongly impact in this field. In this paper, a new system based on radiofrequency (RF) technology is presented which is able to effectively provide home-based telerehabilitation and extract meaningful information on the therapy execution performance. The technology has been tuned to the needs of the rehabilitation system, optimizing the hardware, the communication protocol and the software control. A methodology for extracting the execution time of the rehabilitation tasks, the distance covered by the patient’s hand in each subtask and the velocity profile is presented. The results show that a highly usable system for the rehabilitation of the upper limb has been developed using the RF technology and that performance metrics can be reliably extracted by the acquired signals.