MOVMUS

Welcome to the website of the MOVMUS project. This project is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and ERDF A way of making Europe, under the grant PGC2018-095606-B-C21.

Title

Characterisation of movements and muscular efforts of the healthy hand oriented to the functional evaluation and to the design and adaptation of products for manipulation.

Dates

January 2019 to December 2022

Summary

The manipulation ability of the hand may be compromised by different pathologies with increasing incidence in a population with an increasing life expectancy. In addition, the ICF (WHO) establishes the capacity to carry out activities of daily living (ADL) as the main factor to classify the degree of disability. The kinematics and dynamics of the hand play an important role in the ability to develop ADL, and have been shown to be suitable for the objective assessment of the loss of functionality due to pathology or injury. However, current functional assessment methods do not consider objective measurement beyond the maximum ranges of joint mobility and maximum grip forces.

A more objective evaluation may help in the definition and/or customisation of rehabilitative or surgical treatments and in the measurement of their evolution, while ensuring more objective assessments of work disability. The joint characterisation of movements and muscle activity used by the healthy hand in the performance of ADL may serve as a standard of functional normality for a more objective assessment of the real limitations arisen from pathology or injury. But to date, no systematic characterisation of the hand dynamics in ADL has been performed, largely due to the complexity of the hand (large number of degrees of freedom driven by an intricate muscular complex). The concept of synergies allows to reduce the dimensionality of the problem, and could be used to make such characterisation feasible. In this sense, in an earlier project, the research group has characterised the kinematics of the healthy hand in terms of synergies during the development of ADL, and has shown with prospective studies on pathological subjects its usefulness for the functional assessment.

Therefore, in this project we propose characterising the movements and muscular forces of the healthy hand, analysing especially their synergies, during the performance of clinical tests of function assessment and during ADL with different types of products (including assistive devices). The characterisation will be oriented to the development of objective tools of function assessment and of guidelines for the design and adaptation of products to facilitate the autonomy of people with functional limitations, through tests in impaired subjects. We also intend to improve current biomechanical models to allow simulation of manipulation in ADL from considering these synergies, incorporating the underlying mechanical and neural couplings.

The achievement of these objectives will require the use of an experimental methodology and the results will also contribute to other fields, such as improving the design and control of dexterous hand prostheses.