ETD

• exoskeleton
• game design
• haptics
• rehabilitation
• stroke
• unreal engine
• virtual reality

Exoskeletons are becoming a very powerful tool to help therapists in the rehabilitation of patients who have suffered from neurological conditions or muscular disorders. Therapists have recently started using Virtual-Reality to expose the patients to a variety of obstacles previously not possible with physical objects. Kinesthetic feedback further immerses the patient in the virtual environment and improves the motivation for the rehabilitation process.
In this thesis, we design a system that enables the NESM-Y, an upper-limb exoskeleton, to interact with Unreal Engine 5, a game engine with hyper-realistic visualization and metaverse capabilities. We introduce a modular setup for the kinematic matching of the exoskeleton and virtual avatar, which is capable of incorporating multiple Degrees of Freedom (DOF). A hybrid interaction methodology, which is a combination of ray-based and point-based interaction, was employed to receive kinesthetic feedback from dynamic objects. This methodology was applied to a single player game in UE5, where the players were required to score points by hitting dynamic objects in haptic and no-haptic modes. Lastly, we analyze the performance of the subjects, in both haptic and no-haptic modality, through their scores and feedback questionnaires. We conclude with the limitations faced and how the thesis can contribute for future work.