Application

The Revised Upper Limb Module

The Revised Upper Limb Module is a 20 segment assessment tool used by physical therapists to determine the severity of spinal muscular atrophy in a patient. The exercises consist of range of motion, dexterity, and grip strength focused tasks which together provide a quantitative metric for the patients ability. Some exercises require props such as a pen and pencil, weights, or a plastic container. A few exercise are also required to be performed at a table. More details can be found in the documentation here.

Basic Translation Principles

In general, the idea when translating the exercises was to try to match the range of motion tests 1:1, break the prop based exercises down into their important components, and then work out a way to assess these with our glove. The exercises which required a weight or no weight also needed to be accounted for. The glove's final weight with the OTC was around 450g, Thus we would add additional check boxes in the Range of Motion exercises at different fractions of the goal to assign points for weightless, 200g, or 500g tests. Scores that used this would be lumped into the "weighted" score category while the "unweighted" score only included the exercises that best matched the gloves mass. Multiple exercises were also combined into single scenes if they involved similar movement to save on development time. Finally, the application contained graphical and sound assets that were found on the Unity Asset store and are credited at the end of each session. The success, failure, and partial completion noises were all composed and performed by team members and served to guide the patient on what to do as well as update the observers on what was happening.