Immersive Virtual Environments and Wearable Haptic Devices in Rehabilitation of Children With Neuromotor Impairments

"Serious Game (SG) refers to the use of immersive virtual environments and wearable haptic devices during the treatment. Two SG were specifically developed to allow a playful training of different, targeted Upper Limb (UL) movement based on typical rehabilitation exercises (reach-to-grasp, linear path tracking, hand orientation). The child interacts directly with a virtual environment through haptic feedback provided to his/her fingertips. In particular, moneybox game focused on pincer grasp and reaching tasks with pronation/supination od the hand while marble labyrinth game focused on pointing and tracking movements requiring both eye-hand and upper limb inter-joint coordination."

Conventional therapy (CONV) refers to the neurocognitive rehabilitation approach, with the purpose of improving pointing, tracking, reaching and grasping, and pronation/supination of the forearm. The therapeutic sessions were performed with the exception of the visual channel to ensure that the child focused his/her attention on tactile/kinesthetic information to complete the task. In particular, five different tasks have been proposed during the sessions: 1) recognize trajectories; 2) arm proprioception; 3) object manipulation; 4) recognize surfaces; 5) forearm orientation.