Robot-led Rehabilitative Exercise for People with Parkinson's Disease
Author(s)
Lamsey, Matthew
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Abstract
Regular exercise is a key component of rehabilitative treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD), yet people with PD (PWP) often struggle to adhere to prescribed exercise protocols outside of supervised clinical settings. Technology-based interventions have been proposed to address this gap, but existing systems do not fully replicate the guidance and support provided during in-person therapy. This dissertation presents the design of the Zesty Exercise System for Therapeutic Engagement (ZEST-E), a robot-led rehabilitative exercise system designed to guide PWP through repetitive, large-amplitude stretching exercises. Through two user studies involving PWP and exercise specialists, i.e., physical therapists, this work demonstrates the feasibility of robot-led rehabilitative exercise and identifies key facilitators and barriers to deploying such systems beyond the clinic. In addition, this dissertation characterizes how PWP perform exercises with ZEST-E with a focus on adherence to prescribed movement form. These data are used to develop an automated human activity recognition pipeline that classifies exercise form correctness using inertial measurement unit (IMU)-derived features. Together, these contributions support the feasibility of robot-led rehabilitative stretching exercise for PWP and provide initial methods for assessing exercise performance in this context.
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Date
2026-05
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Dissertation (PhD)