Evaluation of REFLEX Assistance Embodiment in Stroke Patients

Preliminary results about how hemiparetic patients reacted to REFLEX’s assistance were quite promising. They seemed to indicate that the robotic assistance was properly integrated by stroke survivors, who were able to adapt the motion of the non-assisted limb and, therefore, reduce their compensation mechanisms. This chapter presents the second experimental validation carried out to deepen into the effects of REFLEX’s assistance in hemiparetic subjects. During this study, special attention was paid to the effect produced in the muscular activity as it would be a metric to evaluate the embodiment of this technology. Significant differences were obtained at the subject level due to the assistance; however, the high dispersion of the measured outcomes avoided extracting global effects at the group level.