This article presents research focused on tracking manual tasks that are applied in cognitive rehabilitation so as to analyze the movements of patients who suffer from Apraxia and Action Disorganization Syndrome (AADS). This kind of patients find executing Activities of Daily Living (ADL) too difficult due to the loss of memory and capacity to carry out sequential tasks or the impossibility of associating different objects with their functions. This contribution is developed from the work of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Technical University of Munich in collaboration with The University of Birmingham. The Kinect^TM for Windows^© device is used for this purpose. The data collected is compared to an ultrasonic motion capture system. The results indicate a moderate to strong correlation between signals. They also verify that Kinect^TM is very suitable and inexpensive. Moreover, it turns out to be a motion-capture system quite easy to implement for kinematics analysis in ADL.

The integration of rehabilitation systems in an ambient assisted living environment can provide a powerful and versatile tool for long-term stroke rehabilitation goals. This paper introduces a novel concept of a personalized cognitive rehabilitation system in a naturalistic setting. The proposed platform was developed within the CogWatch project, with the intent of fostering independence in activities of daily living in patients with apraxia and action disorganization syndrome. Technical usability was evaluated in a series of pilot experiments, which illustrate how this approach may help to retrain patients in activities of daily living. The first system prototype has been tested with 36 participants divided into three groups, providing an exploratory evaluation of the usability of this solution and its acceptability. The technical solutions used within the CogWatch project are targeted to meet both the end users’ needs from the interaction and usability point of views and the clinical requirements associated with the use of such systems. The challenges behind the development of ambient assisted living systems for cognitive rehabilitation are discussed.