The Gross Motor Function Estimation of Upper Extremity with Simple Daily Living Activities for the Outcome Measurement: Design, Development, and Automation

The main objective of the work is to develop an instrumented hand function test system to assess the gross motor function of the upper limb in human beings. Simple day-to-day activities are selected for the test item generation, and they are: i) displacement of cylindrical object and ii) pouring water into a cup test. The trajectory of hand movement and position values obtained from the Logitech B525 USB camera are fused with the motion data from MPU6050 and further linearized through the Extended Kalman Filter. The activity time is automatically calculated using the developed instrument. Also, the acceleration, orientation, trajectory plots of the object movement, and mean force are captured using the sensor fusion technique. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient is above 0.9, representing a high correlation between the traditional stopwatch and automated test methods. Manual stopwatch usage is avoided, which reduces the clinician's burden. The method is more useful as patients need not visit the physiotherapy center each time for outcome measurement.