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Nowadays Virtual Prototyping (VP) of robots dynamics is an effective tool to simulate the system behavior and improve the quality of rehabilitation activities. Using a VP software environment, the patients can be visually guided in their actions and the physiotherapist can control the system parameters easily to investigate the patients' performances in real time. In this paper VP concept is introducted to support the use of an upper-limb orthosis and to improve therapeutic efficacy in rehabilitation. The system adopted is a human-worn rehabilitation exoskeleton enhanced with a VP-based application to make therapeutic exercises more accessible while reducing the effort in using the system and managing the therapy. The VP application in particular merges computational musculoskeletal analysis with simplified controls, 3D viewing and real time simulation of the patients' movements. The application has been designed to specifically address the needs of patients and therapists and improve the satisfaction in use of the global system as well as the therpy results. The system validation is based on an ad-hoc evaluation protocol and is carried out by directly involving final users furing rehabilitation sessions. Experimental results demonstrated how VP prototyping effectively support the system use from both patients and physiotherapists: on one hand patients are nove motivated and they learn extract movements faster; on the other hand physiotherapists are supportedin diagnosis and data elaboration, and finally the rehabilitation therapy efficiency is improved.

In the last years, some attempts have been made to explore the use of smart objects, with the purpose of monitoring well-being and supporting independent living. However, an inventory of characteristics of smart assistive devices currently available on the market is still lacking. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of such products and in particular to analyse their functionalities in order to understand if they can be considered inclusive and if they effectively match the needs of elderly. This review can be useful for researchers and designers of Ambient Intelligent Environments, to realise where efforts should be focused in order to match the demand from the elderly people’s side.

Nowadays, upper-limb injury or impairment represent a widespread problem, related to sport accidents or traumas, surgery operations, stroke and so on. The typical approach to the rehabilitation is one or more physiotherapy sessions, to restore muscular mass and strength. Despite this, over the years, several works proposed innovative solutions, including electromechanical orthoses, which work in relation to the muscular activity, measured by techniques such as superficial electromyography (sEMG). Yet, these systems are still far from commercialization because of their cost, complexity and difficulties in using. A currently unmet need regards the ability of the therapist to control and manage data through a remote interface, by exploiting some of the latest technological resources on the market (smartphones, tablets). The present works aims at designing an upper-limb rehabilitation system, based on an orthosis, sEMG wireless sensors and a dedicated software architecture to overcome these limitations. This will lead to an important change of perspective in physiotherapy procedures since data collection and correlation will produce innovative medical protocols, addressed to people affected by several types of injury or impairment.Copyright © 2013 by ASME

The paper analyzes the performance of a reverberation chamber equipped by a “carousel” stirring system. The working volume is positioned inside the stirrer rotating volume. More precisely, the carousel consists of several vertical strips that rotate around a central axis and having a total diameter as large as possible compared to chamber dimensions. An FDTD code, optimized for reverberation chamber simulations and tested with experimental results, is used to analyze the chamber performance as function of strip number and width. The proposed setup increases the working volume and improves the reverberation chamber behavior with respect to a traditional setup. Moreover, it needs just one motor to control the stirrer, and it does not require more complex mechanical part. All simulations are compared to measurements showing a good agreement.