Alberto JARDÓN HUETE

• Doctor of Engineering
• Head of Department at University Carlos III de Madrid

Omnidirectional mobile robots are essential in modern industry because of their ability to move in any direction, facilitating operations in confined spaces with high precision. This paper presents the design and development of an omnidirectional moving platform designed to transport loads on flat industrial surfaces, with three degrees of freedom...

This work presents the design of a new game controller device and the development of two exergames (Peter Jumper and Andromeda) for upper limb rehabilitation. The eJamar controller is a novel electromechanical device designed to measure wrist and hand movements, such as pronation/supination, flexion/extension, and ulnar/radial deviation, enabling u...

Introduction During the rehabilitation process (RHB) of the patient with traumatic upper-limb amputation, the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) facilitates the incorporation of the prosthesis into the body schema. This reinforces and enhances sensorimotor and cognitive stimulation to improve motor learning and motor patterns, while normalizing...

Robotic-assisted upper limb rehabilitation has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential to enhance the recovery process for individuals with motor impairments resulting from neurological conditions and injuries. The main rehabilitation treatments rely on the repetitive execution of a movement of the upper-limb, guided by a...

A critical element of neurological function is eye–hand coordination: the ability of our vision system to coordinate the information received through the eyes to control, guide, and direct the hands to accomplish a task. Recent evidence shows that this ability can be disturbed by strokes or other neurological disorders, with critical consequences f...

El uso de entornos virtuales en el ámbito de la robótica es cada vez más común haciendo posibles nuevas formas de interacción humano-robot. En este trabajo se presenta el desarrollo de un sistema de teleoperación remota e inmersiva de un robot colaborativo ABB Gofa. El entorno virtual presenta dos escenas, una enfocada a la familiarización del usua...

La detección de la espasticidad es compleja debido a su origen en el sistema nervioso central y los síntomas musculares. Este proyecto desarrolla un método automático para detectar el grado de espasticidad según la escala Ashworth, usando movimientos pasivos, rápidos y suaves en el paciente y midiendo la excitación cerebral. Software como OpenSim y...

La demanda de rehabilitación y terapia física en el mundo es cada vez mayor, debido a un envejecimiento de la población y a una vida más sedentaria. Una de las terapias más prometedoras es la terapia asistida con realidad virtual (VR), ya que mejora el ánimo del paciente, su autonomía y con ello las horas que le dedica a la terapia. Las carencias d...

Serious games extend beyond entertainment to applications like rehabilitation, enhancing patient motivation and therapy effectiveness. This project aims to develop a serious game for patients with cervicalgia, cervical osteoarthritis, or conditions affecting cervical mobility. Utilizing the classic Pac-Man game and a vision system detecting face or...

Background Chronicity and lack of motivation often go together during the upper limb rehabilitation process in stroke. Virtual reality is a useful tool in this context, providing safe, intensive, individualised treatments in a playful environment. B-cost, easy-to-use devices with personalised and motivating games for a specific population seem to b...

In neurorehabilitation, assessment of functional problems is essential to define optimal rehabilitation treatments. Usually, this assessment process requires distinguishing between impaired and non-impaired behavior of limbs. One of the common muscle motor disorders affecting limbs is spasticity, which is complicated to quantify objectively due to...

El Comité Español de Automática (CEA) es una asociación científica sin ánimo de lucro que impulsa el desarrollo, la investigación y las enseñanzasuniversitarias en Automática. Es miembro nacional de la Federación Internacional de Control Automático (IFAC), y celebra anualmente desde el año 1977 las Jornadas de Automática. Estas se organizan por dis...

La rehabilitación es una herramienta esencial que ayuda a las personas a restaurar la movilidad en las extremidades afectadas por diversas afecciones, como enfermedades neurológicas. Las terapias convencionales, que incluyen terapia ocupacional, física y del habla, se han mejorado con nuevas tecnologías, como sistemas robóticos asistidos y juegos d...

Background Muscle strength and dexterity impairments are common among patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) producing limitations in activities of daily living related to the upper limb (UL). This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of serious games specifically developed for the MYO Armband® capture sensor in improving forearm and wrist mobi...

This paper presents a new extension of a Bézier fitting method that can now be applied in non-Euclidean spaces. While the original algorithm was restricted to the 2D plane due to the dependence on the properties of linear spaces, this new method overcomes this limitation by leveraging the power of Lie groups. By incorporating tangent vectors and gr...

The Box and Blocks Test (BBT) is a widely used outcome measure for manual dexterity assessments in neurological rehabilitation. The BBT score is based on the maximum number of cubes that a person is able to displace during a 60s time window. In this paper, a low-cost instrumented system to automatically obtain the number of cubes using proximity se...

Actualmente, los procedimientos de evaluación funcional se caracterizan por ser laboriosos, con poca digitalización de resultados, y una reducida adaptabilidad a las necesidades particulares de los pacientes. En este artículo, se presenta una novedosa línea de investigación enfocada en la automatización de escalas clínicas de evaluación funcional d...

Several methodologies exist for solving the inverse kinematics of a manipulator arm. Basing on screw theory, it is possible to efficiently obtain complete and exact solutions. An open-source C++ implementation of an automated problem solver of this kind is introduced, and a comparative with selected known algorithms is established using the TEO hum...

A medida que aumenta la sioterapia de rehabilitación, también aumenta el deseo de soluciones robóticas robustas y adaptables para estandarizar y automatizar procedimientos comunes. Sin embargo, las técnicas de control modernas todavía tienen que migrar a entornos centrados en la interacción humana como los que requiere la fisioterapia. Esto se debe...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common inflammatory neurological disease in young adults, with a high prevalence worldwide (2.8 million people). To aid in the MS treatment, using VR tools in cognitive and motor rehabilitation of such disease has been growing progressively in the last years. However, the role of VR as a rehabilitative tool in MS...

Background: The objective of the present study was to develop a virtual reality protocol based on activities of daily living and conventional rehabilitation, using Leap Motion Controller to improve motor function in upper extremity rehabilitation in stroke patients. At the same time, the purpose was to explore its efficacy in the recovery of upper...

PRESSMATIC es un dispositivo electromecánico que genera movimientos automáticos de apertura y cierre en su extremo. Está dirigido a personas que conservan movilidad en las extremidades superiores, pero carecen de destreza manual para utilizar herramientas pequeñas como tijeras, cortaúñas o pinzas. En el desarrollo tecnológico del dispositivo, se ha...

At present, rehabilitation robotics field has stressed on developing systems for enhancing the rehabilitation cycle, considering primarily the intervention stage of the process. However, the assessment of functional problems is essential to define optimal rehabilitation treatments. This paper presents a robot-based strategy for the evaluation of a...

Spasticity is a motor disorder that causes stiffness or tightness of the muscles and can interfere with normal movement, speech, and gait. Traditionally, the spasticity assessment is carried out by clinicians using standardized procedures for objective evaluation. However, these procedures are manually performed and, thereby, they could be influenc...

Objective assessment of motor function is essential in neurological rehabilitation to determine the effectiveness of treatments, being one of the most commonly used clinical tests the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA). This multi-item and performance-based test evaluate different functional aspects including balance and motor functioning. This paper pres...

Background: Dexterity and activities of daily living limitations on the upper limb (UL) represent one of the most common problems in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the specially developed Serious Games that make use of the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) as main user interface for impr...

In recent decades, gaming technology has been accepted as a feasible method for complementing traditional clinical practice, especially in neurorehabilitation; however, the viability of using 3D Virtual Reality (VR) for the assessment of upper limb motor function has not been fully explored. For that purpose, we developed a VR-based version of the...

Background: Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes impaired motor functions. Virtual reality technology may be recommended to optimize motor learning in a safe environment. The objective of this paper was to evaluate the effects of a novel immersive virtual reality technology used for serious games (Oculus Rift 2 plus leap...

This paper presents the implementation of a modular framework that allows the integration of different peripheral components towards facilitating the control of an assistive robotic arm. For that purpose, several components, such as proximity sensors, an RGB camera and a joystick, were integrated into the same control paradigm of the robotic arm. F...

Background: Dexterity and activities of daily living limitations on the upper limb (UL) represent one of the most common problems in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the specially developed Serious Games that make use of the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) as main user interface for impr...

En este artículo, se presenta el desarrollo de un sistema basado en sensores de proximidad que permite obtener de forma automática la puntuación del Box and Blocks Test (BBT), destinado a medir la destreza manual gruesa. La evaluación del BBT se basa en el máximo número de cubos desplazados en una ventana de tiempo. Por ese motivo, se han utilizado...

Background: Dexterity and activities of daily living limitations on the upper limb (UL) represent one of the most common problems in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the specially developed Serious Games that make use of the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) as main user interface for impr...

Background: Dexterity and activities of daily living limitations on the upper limb (UL) represent one of the most common problems in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the specially developed Serious Games that make use of the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) as main user interface for impr...

Navigation and exploration in 3D environments is still a challenging task for autonomous robots that move on the ground. Robots for Search and Rescue missions must deal with unstructured and very complex scenarios. This paper presents a path planning system for navigation and exploration of ground robots in such situations. We use (unordered) point...

The development of computer vision algorithms for navigation or object detection is one of the key issues of underwater robotics. However, extracting features from underwater images is challenging due to the presence of lighting defects, which need to be counteracted. This requires good environmental knowledge, either as a dataset or as a physic mo...

Background: Non-immersive video games are currently being used as technological rehabilitation tools for individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this feasibility study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Leap Motion Controller® (LMC) system used with serious games designed for the upper limb (UL), as well as the levels of satisf...

Assessment of motor impairments is manually performed by clinicians based on traditional clinical scales. This manual process may be affected by the observer's subjectivity. This paper suggests a robot-based framework for the objective assessment of upper extremity (UE) motor functionality.

A día de hoy, el desarrollo de sistemas robóticos de asistencia en procedimientos de rehabilitación ha sido elevado. Sin embargo, existen ciertas aspectos que limitan un uso más extendido. Una posible causa puede ser que las mejoras en función motora no son traspasadas directamente al desarrollo de actividades de la vida diaria. Esto puede provenir...

In recent years, the possibility of using serious gaming technology for the automation of clinical procedures for assessment of motor function have captured the interest of the research community. In this paper, a virtual version of the Box and Blocks Test (BBT) for manual dexterity assessment is presented. This game-like system combines the classi...

Opportunities of using Virtual Reality (VR) technology for the automation of clinical procedures in general, and for the assessment of motor function in particular, have not been fully explored in Parkinson' disease (PD). For that purpose, a game-like version of the Box and Blocks Test (BBT) for automatic assessment of hand motor function in VR was...

Robot-aided systems to support the physical rehabilitation of individuals with neurological impairment is one of the fields that has been widely developed in the last few decades. However, the adoption of these systems in clinical practice remains limited. In order to better understanding the causes of this limitation, a systematic review of robot-...

Traditionally, the assessment of upper limb (UL) motor function in neurorehabilitation is carried out by clinicians using standard clinical tests for objective evaluation, but which could be influenced by the clinician’s subjectivity or expertise. The automation of such traditional outcome measures (tests) is an interesting and emerging field in ne...

This paper presents a preliminary study on the effectiveness of using a virtual environment for automation of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scoring. Also, a study of the feasibility of introducing a smoothness parameter to improve the scoring is described. A Kinect-based virtual environment was used for data acquisition and to enable a friendly m...

Robotics can play a significant role in the rehabilitation of patients with spasticity by improving their early diagnosis and reducing the costs associated with care. Spasticity is a muscle control disorder characterized by an increase in muscle tone with exaggerated stretch reflexes, as one component of the upper motor neuron syndrome. Furthermore...

Objective assessment of motor function is an important component to evaluating the effectiveness of a rehabilitation process. Such assessments are carried out by clinicians using traditional tests and scales. The Box and Blocks Test (BBT) is one such scale, focusing on manual dexterity evaluation. The score is the maximum number of cubes that a per...

This work reviews the results of a challenging engineering project that arose with the goal of implementing an electro-mechanical, automatic, portable, and inexpensive device. The device should be able to assist people who lack of dexterity in their hands to use small tools and everyday utensils, such as scissors or tweezers. In this article, the h...

Serious Games and Virtual Reality (VR) are being considered at present as an alternative to traditional rehabilitation therapies. In this paper, the ongoing development of a framework focused on rehabilitation and assessment of the upper limb motor function based on serious games as a source of entertainment for physiotherapy patients is described....

The design and application of Serious Games (SG) based on the Leap Motion sensor are presented as a tool to support the rehabilitation therapies for upper limbs. Initially, the design principles and their implementation are described, focusing on improving both unilateral and bilateral manual dexterity and coordination. The design of the games has...

Robot-mediated neurorehabilitation is a growing field that seeks to incorporate advances in robotics combined with neuroscience and rehabilitation to define new methods for treating problems related with neurological diseases. In this paper, a systematic literature review is conducted to identify the contribution of robotics for upper limb neuroreh...

The computational complexity of humanoid robot balance control is reduced through the application of simplified kinematics and dynamics models. However, these simplifications lead to the introduction of errors that add to other inherent electro-mechanic inaccuracies and affect the robotic system. Linear control systems deal with these inaccuracies...

In previous work [1], an automatic assessment system was presented for the evaluation of patient progress and effectiveness of the therapy, that is based on the Box and Blocks Test (BBT) of manual dexterity. In this article, a study of the feasibility to use in Parkinson treatment is presented. The results advocates the use of automated methods in...

Traditional motor assessment is carried out by clinicians using standard clinical tests in order to have objectivity in the evaluation, but this manual procedure is liable to the observer subjectivity. In this article, an automatic assessment system based on the Box and Blocks Test (BBT) of manual dexterity is presented. Also, the automatic test ad...

RoboHealth is a project that is focused on giving assistance to medical staff in order to improve the quality of treatment provided to patients in rehabilitation processes. The project covers two aspects during the rehabilitation process: assessment and therapy itself. In previous work [1], an automatic assessment system was presented for the evalu...

El cada vez más elevado número de personas que requieren atención médica para rehabilitación física o cognitiva (post-traumática, post-operatoria o por envejecimiento), supone cada vez mayor saturación en los servicios médicos. Esto repercute de forma negativa en la calidad del tratamiento impartido. El proyecto RoboHealth, intenta contribuir a pal...

The teleoperation of robot manipulators over the internet suffers from variable delays in the communications. Here we address a tele-assistance scenario, where a remote operator assists a disabled or elderly user on daily life tasks. Our behavioral approach uses local environment information from robot sensing to help enable faster execution for a...

PRESSMATIC is a portable electromechanical device which was designed to assist people whose manual dexterity has been impaired for any reason (ageing, illness, paralysis, etc.). Its goal is restoring the loss of functionali-ty of the thumb and forefinger in certain tasks that require pinching movements (e.g. grabbing scissors, tweezers, etc.). In t...

Los actuadores de rigidez variable son dispositivos que permiten cambiar la posicíon y rigidez articular de un robot en forma simult́ultimos ãnado y desarrollado muchos dispositivos de este tipo, con la esperanza de favorecer la anea. En los ́nos se han disẽseguridad en la interaccíon humano-robot y mejorar el rendimiento dińamico de los robots. En...

Much work in robotics aimed at real-world applications falls in the large segment between teleoperated and fully autonomous systems. Such systems are characterized by the close coupling between the human operator and the robot, in principle, allowing the agents to share their particular sensing, adaptation, and decision-making capabilities. Replica...

Humanoids can learn motor skills through the Programming by Demonstration (PbD) framework, which allows matching the kinematic movements of a robot with those of a human. Continuous Goal- Directed Actions (CGDA) is a framework that can complement the paradigm of robot imitation. Instead of kinematic parameters, its encoding is centered on the chang...

Nowadays, the vast majority of the tunnel inspection processes are performed manually by qualified operators. The process is subjective and the operators need to face very uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions such as dust environments, absence of light, or toxic substance exposition. Robotic technology can overcome many of these disadvantage...

Mental models allow us to imagine how something may be, only by its description. This video presents a use-case demonstration of a high-dimensional geometrical system for acquiring mental models for robots, called Robot Imagination System (RIS). RIS generates models of objects based on their descriptive words, even prior to their perception. This i...

Postural control of humanoid robots during locomotion tasks has been typically focused in keeping balance by means of classic feedback control systems. The study of human behaviour in postural control reveals the existence of an anticipative component for postural control introduced by means of a feedforward system. This anticipative subsystem is i...

One of the grand challenges for the robotics community is to create robots that operate robustly in real-world scenarios. Most current robots are limited to factories, laboratories or similar controlled settings. This contrasts with the seeming ease with which insects, animals and humans handle uncertainty, dynamic events and complexity. Assistive...

In this paper, we present an accessible interface in the context of our work on bringing advanced robotics closer to everyday domestic users. This interface allows inexperienced users to be capable of programming an assistive robotic arm to perform a specific desired task in a household environment. The programming process is performed through the...

In this paper, we study how human-robot interaction can be beneficial on the Continuous Goal-Directed Actions (CGDA) framework. Specifically, a system for robot discovery of motor primitives from random human-guided movements has been developed. These guided motor primitives (GMP) are used as scaffolds to reproduce a goal-directed actions. CGDA enc...

Tunnels environments are characterized by dust, humidity, and absence of natural light. Artificial and natural impacts, change in load criteria, or the simple effect of ageing, make tunnels require inspection and maintenance. These operations are commonly performed by human workers taking time and expertise without guarantee quality control. Roboti...

Microtunneling is a trenchless construction method that is highly adequate to install pipelines beneath roads, rail roads, dams, harbours and environmentally sensitive areas. Microtunneling could be understood as a remotely-controlled, guidance operation of a MicroTunneling Boring Machine (MTBM), where references are provided by a human operator fr...

Programming by demonstration (PbD) allows matching the kinematic movements of a robot with those of a human. The presented Continuous Goal-Directed Actions (CGDA) is able to additionally encode the effects of a de-monstrated action, which are not encoded in PbD. CGDA allows generalization, recognition and execution of action effects on the environm...

La invención proporciona un sistema para la verificación de la trayectoria de un túnel (1). Este sistema comprende, al menos una superficie de recepción adecuada para la recepción de luz láser (3, 13), sensores (4, 14) adecuados para capturar datos sobre la incidencia del láser (9) en la al menos una superficie adecuada para la recepción de luz lás...

The future of robotics predicts that robots will integrate themselves more every day with human beings and their environments. To achieve this integration, robots need to acquire information about the environment and its objects. There is a big need for algorithms to provide robots with these sort of skills, from the location where objects are need...

Visibility graphs are basic planning algorithms,widely used in mobile robotics and other disciplines. The construction of a visibility graph can be considered a tool based on geometry that provides support to planning strategies in mobile robots. Visually, the method is used to solve that planning, which is quite extended due to the simplicity of o...