Exploiting the link between action and perception: Minimally assisted robotic training of the kinesthetic sense

Abstract

Since action and perception are tightly coupled and the dysfunction of one of the two channels necessary give rise to different degrees of impairment in the other, we believe that the recovery process would significantly benefit from training protocols able to evaluate and consistently recruit both motor aspects and proprioception concurrently. Therefore, we propose a novel assistive protocol for kinesthetic training of reaching movements that is able to adaptively regulate the level of haptic guidance according to the level of proprioceptive performance along specific directions. Preliminary results show that our adaptive procedure is able to finely tune the level of guidance to the desired level of kinesthetic performance in all the target directions within the duration of the training session. Moreover, the algorithm is able to compensate for perceptual anisotropies that depend on the force direction and its parameters are sensitive to modulations of the kinesthetic sensitivity that may arise as a consequence of practice.