抄録
In occupational therapy for the developmental disordered children, our aim is developing promotion of upper limb and cognitive functions. But the present evaluations of functions are almost based on observations of therapists, therefore objective evaluation is poor. We have developed a rehabilitation system using a haptic device (HD) for upper limb and cognitive functions of developmental disordered children. HD can give haptic sensations when we touched a virtual object on a computer display. So the use of a computer system may be effective tool for objective evaluations. In addition, it is thought that the sensation of HD promotes child's motivation. By investigation of healthy children, we analyzed the correlation between the duration and error distance of the wave tasks. As a result, it was found that the difference of sensations of HD influences the tasks performance. Moreover, children reactions toward HD system ware good, in addition HD was immediately accepted and deeply attracted the interests of children. It was suggested that doing the wave tasks that using HD, evaluation and training of shoulder and elbow joints movements are possible. Our next step is to use HD to investigate and analyze the development of disordered children, and to evaluate the effectiveness of HD system.
