Clinical evaluation of assistive robotic arm

Efficacy evaluation using psychological estimation scale

Abstract

Assistive robotic arms are expected to improve autonomy and independence of persons with quadriplegia. However, there are some problems toward dissemination of the assistive robotic arms in Japan. As a part of the cost and benefit evaluation to disseminate the assistive robotic arms, clinical evaluation was conducted by five persons with spinal cord injury. In the experiments, subjects manipulated a robotic arm and execute some tasks. The results shows the possibility that robotic arms enable subjects to perform some activities of daily living and give positive psychological impacts to them. This paper describes the abstract of this project and some primitive results that we acquired so far.