Aims: Assess the intrarater and interrater reliabilities and diagnostic accuracy of a new vaginal dynamometer to measure pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength in incontinent and continent women.
Methods: A test-retest reliability study including 152 female patients. Exclusion criteria: history of urge urinary incontinence, prolapse of pelvic organ, pregnancy, previous urogynecological surgery, severe vaginal atrophy, or neurological conditions. The examination comprised digital assessment using the modified Oxford scale (MOS) and dynamometry measurements with a new prototype hand-held dynamometer. The MOS score ranges from 0 to 5: 0, no contraction; 1, flicker; 2, weak; 3, moderate; 4, good; 5, strong.
Examinations were performed by a physiatrist, a physiotherapist and a midwife.
The rest period between each rater measurement was 5 minutes. Assessment of intrarater and interrater reliability was calculated with the intraclass correlation coefficient., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works, The paper presents a planning procedure that allows an anthropomorphic dual-arm robotic system to perform a manipulation task in a natural human-like way by using demonstrated human movements. The key idea of the proposal is to convert the demonstrated trajectories into attractive potential fields defined over the configuration space and then use an RRT*-based planning algorithm that minimizes a path-cost function designed to bias the tree growth towards the human-demonstrated configurations. The paper presents a description of the proposed approach as well as results from a conceptual and a real application example, the latter using a real anthropomorphic dual-arm robotic system. A path-quality measure, based on first-order synergies (correlations between joint velocities) obtained from real human movements, is also proposed and used for evaluation and comparison purposes.
The obtained results show that the paths obtained with the
proposed procedure are more human-like., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

The first choice treatment in urinary incontinence (UI) is rehabilitation of the pelvic floor in order to improve muscle strength. However, no entirely reliable instruments for quantifying pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength are currently available. Our aim was to test the intra-rater reliability and diagnostic accuracy of a new vaginal dynamometer for measuring PFM strength. Methods: Test-retest reliability study. One hundred and four women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI) were recruited. Patients were excluded if they had a history consistent with urge urinary incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse, pregnancy, previous urogynecological surgery, severe vaginal atrophy, or neurological conditions. The examination comprised digital palpation quantified by the modified Oxford scale and by two consecutive dynamometry measurements obtained using a new prototype dynamometer. This instrument comprises a speculum in which an inductive displacement sensor LVDTSM210.10.2.KTmodel, Schreiber) is attached to a spring of known stiffness constant (k). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated to assess intra-rater reliability.
Diagnostic accuracy was assessed using Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curves analysis. Results: Of the 104 subjects included, 59.6% presented scores between 0–2 on the Oxford scale. Intra-rater reliability was 0.98 (95%CI: 0.97– 0.99). In the Bland & Altman plot, the distribution of disagreements was similar in the lowest and the highest strength values. The diagnostic accuracy of the dynamometer with regard to digital palpation showed an area under the curve of 0.85 (95%CI: 0.77–0.93). Conclusions: Our results suggest that this new vaginal dynamometer is a reliable and valid instrument for quantifying PFM strength., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The first choice treatment in urinary incontinence (UI) is rehabilitation of the pelvic floor in order to improve muscle strength. However, no entirely reliable instruments for quantifying pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength are currently available. Our aim was to test the intra-rater reliability and diagnostic accuracy of a new vaginal dynamometer for measuring PFM strength. Methods: Test-retest reliability study. One hundred and four women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI) were recruited. Patients were excluded if they had a history consistent with urge urinary incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse, pregnancy, previous urogynecological surgery, severe vaginal atrophy, or neurological conditions. The examination comprised digital palpation quantified by the modified Oxford scale and by two consecutive dynamometry measurements obtained using a new prototype dynamometer. This instrument comprises a speculum in which an inductive displacement sensor LVDTSM210.10.2.KTmodel, Schreiber) is attached to a spring of known stiffness constant (k). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated to assess intra-rater reliability.
Diagnostic accuracy was assessed using Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curves analysis. Results: Of the 104 subjects included, 59.6% presented scores between 0–2 on the Oxford scale. Intra-rater reliability was 0.98 (95%CI: 0.97– 0.99). In the Bland & Altman plot, the distribution of disagreements was similar in the lowest and the highest strength values. The diagnostic accuracy of the dynamometer with regard to digital palpation showed an area under the curve of 0.85 (95%CI: 0.77–0.93). Conclusions: Our results suggest that this new vaginal dynamometer is a reliable and valid instrument for quantifying PFM strength., Peer Reviewed

This material may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This material may be found at https://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/%28ASCE%29IR.1943-4774.0001415., The Cequia of Manresa is a 26-km open channel constructed in the fourteenth century that conveys water from the Llobregat River to the city of Manresa using an elevation difference of 10.4 m. The channel is still operational today, supplying water for domestic, industrial, and agricultural uses to an overall population of 150,000 people. A hydrometric module was constructed in 1864 to regulate the flow rate in the Cequia to under 1,000¿¿L/s. This module was dismantled in 1959 and is currently nonoperational. This work studied the operation of the module and determined whether it met the objectives for which it was built. The module was modeled numerically. Owing to the lack of experimental measures from the module, the model was validated with an analytical model from the literature, which demonstrated its accuracy. The model was created by applying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using FLOW-3D software. The results showed that the numerical model reproduced the dynamic behavior of the hydrometric module (transitory), and that the old automated system operated correctly, limiting the flow to the required value. The numerical models can be used as a tool for historical research., Peer Reviewed

The most reliable prognostic factors associated with Upper Extremity (UE) recovery are localized motor impairments, especially in the musculature of the hand and abduction of the shoulder in the first days after a stroke. Evaluation of the biomechanics of the hand allows an accurate identification of the motion arcs of the digital joints.
Objective: Assess the prognostic value of the range of motion of the finger joints using an instrumental glove (CyberGlove II®) one week after stroke for UE functional recovery at 6 months.
Methodology: A prospective, longitudinal, observational study with follow-ups at 3-4 days, 1 week, 3 and 6months of patients with UE motor impairment. Variables collected included: demographic data, level of stroke severity (NIHSS), deep sensitivity, sphincter incontinence, Fugl Meyer Assessment of UE (FM-UE), muscle balance with the Medical Research Council (MRC), muscle tone (Modified Ashworth Scale) and pre- and post-stroke functional ability (Barthel Index and Modified Rankin Scale). Active range of motion of the metacarpophalangeal and interphalangeal joints of the index, middle finger, annulary, and little finger was assessed with CyberGlove II® without and against gravity. The dependent variable UE function was evaluated with the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) categorized as good function (ARAT=10) and poor function (ARAT<10).
Results: 31 patients were included, 18 of which completed the 6-month follow-up. Mean age was 68.2 years (SD = 9.1) and 72.2 % were men. A total of 77.8 % of strokes were ischemic, and 50 % of these were lacunar. Mean NIHSS score was 9.2 (SD = 5.5). Motor NIHSS of UE, FM-UE and MRC of the flexion-extension musculature of the digits and wrist were prognostic factors for the recovery of UE function., Peer Reviewed

© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works, The paper presents a planning procedure that allows an anthropomorphic dual-arm robotic system to perform a manipulation task in a natural human-like way by using demonstrated human movements. The key idea of the proposal is to convert the demonstrated trajectories into attractive potential fields defined over the configuration space and then use an RRT*-based planning algorithm that minimizes a path-cost function designed to bias the tree growth towards the human-demonstrated configurations. The paper presents a description of the proposed approach as well as results from a conceptual and a real application example, the latter using a real anthropomorphic dual-arm robotic system. A path-quality measure, based on first-order synergies (correlations between joint velocities) obtained from real human movements, is also proposed and used for evaluation and comparison purposes.
The obtained results show that the paths obtained with the
proposed procedure are more human-like., Peer Reviewed

Physics-based motion planning is a challenging task, since it requires the computation of the robot motions while allowing possible interactions with (some of) the obstacles in the environment. Kinodynamic motion planners equipped with a dynamic engine acting as state propagator are usually used for that purpose. The difficulties arise in the setting of the adequate forces for the interactions and because these interactions may change the pose of the manipulatable obstacles, thus either facilitating or preventing the finding of a solution path. The use of knowledge can alleviate the stated difficulties. This paper proposes the use of an enhanced state propagator composed of a dynamic engine and a low-level geometric reasoning process that is used to determine how to interact with the objects, i.e. from where and with which forces. The proposal, called ¿-PMP can be used with any kinodynamic planner, thus giving rise to e.g. ¿-RRT. The approach also includes a preprocessing step that infers from a semantic abstract knowledge described in terms of an ontology the manipulation knowledge required by the reasoning process. The proposed approach has been validated with several examples involving an holonomic mobile robot, a robot with differential constraints and a serial manipulator, and benchmarked using several state-of-the art kinodynamic planners. The results showed a significant difference in the power consumption with respect to simple physics-based planning, an improvement in the success rate and in the quality of the solution paths., Peer Reviewed

© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works, The paper deals with the problem of motion planning for anthropomorphic dual-arm robots. It introduces a measure of the similarity of the movements needed to solve two given tasks. Planning using this measure to select proper arm synergies for a given task improves the planning performance and the resulting plan., Peer Reviewed

Aims: Assess the intrarater and interrater reliabilities and diagnostic accuracy of a new vaginal dynamometer to measure pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength in incontinent and continent women.
Methods: A test-retest reliability study including 152 female patients. Exclusion criteria: history of urge urinary incontinence, prolapse of pelvic organ, pregnancy, previous urogynecological surgery, severe vaginal atrophy, or neurological conditions. The examination comprised digital assessment using the modified Oxford scale (MOS) and dynamometry measurements with a new prototype hand-held dynamometer. The MOS score ranges from 0 to 5: 0, no contraction; 1, flicker; 2, weak; 3, moderate; 4, good; 5, strong.
Examinations were performed by a physiatrist, a physiotherapist and a midwife.
The rest period between each rater measurement was 5 minutes. Assessment of intrarater and interrater reliability was calculated with the intraclass correlation coefficient., Peer Reviewed

This material may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This material may be found at https://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/%28ASCE%29IR.1943-4774.0001415., The Cequia of Manresa is a 26-km open channel constructed in the fourteenth century that conveys water from the Llobregat River to the city of Manresa using an elevation difference of 10.4 m. The channel is still operational today, supplying water for domestic, industrial, and agricultural uses to an overall population of 150,000 people. A hydrometric module was constructed in 1864 to regulate the flow rate in the Cequia to under 1,000¿¿L/s. This module was dismantled in 1959 and is currently nonoperational. This work studied the operation of the module and determined whether it met the objectives for which it was built. The module was modeled numerically. Owing to the lack of experimental measures from the module, the model was validated with an analytical model from the literature, which demonstrated its accuracy. The model was created by applying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using FLOW-3D software. The results showed that the numerical model reproduced the dynamic behavior of the hydrometric module (transitory), and that the old automated system operated correctly, limiting the flow to the required value. The numerical models can be used as a tool for historical research., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

The most reliable prognostic factors associated with Upper Extremity (UE) recovery are localized motor impairments, especially in the musculature of the hand and abduction of the shoulder in the first days after a stroke. Evaluation of the biomechanics of the hand allows an accurate identification of the motion arcs of the digital joints.
Objective: Assess the prognostic value of the range of motion of the finger joints using an instrumental glove (CyberGlove II®) one week after stroke for UE functional recovery at 6 months.
Methodology: A prospective, longitudinal, observational study with follow-ups at 3-4 days, 1 week, 3 and 6months of patients with UE motor impairment. Variables collected included: demographic data, level of stroke severity (NIHSS), deep sensitivity, sphincter incontinence, Fugl Meyer Assessment of UE (FM-UE), muscle balance with the Medical Research Council (MRC), muscle tone (Modified Ashworth Scale) and pre- and post-stroke functional ability (Barthel Index and Modified Rankin Scale). Active range of motion of the metacarpophalangeal and interphalangeal joints of the index, middle finger, annulary, and little finger was assessed with CyberGlove II® without and against gravity. The dependent variable UE function was evaluated with the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) categorized as good function (ARAT=10) and poor function (ARAT<10).
Results: 31 patients were included, 18 of which completed the 6-month follow-up. Mean age was 68.2 years (SD = 9.1) and 72.2 % were men. A total of 77.8 % of strokes were ischemic, and 50 % of these were lacunar. Mean NIHSS score was 9.2 (SD = 5.5). Motor NIHSS of UE, FM-UE and MRC of the flexion-extension musculature of the digits and wrist were prognostic factors for the recovery of UE function., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works, The paper deals with the problem of motion planning for anthropomorphic dual-arm robots. It introduces a measure of the similarity of the movements needed to solve two given tasks. Planning using this measure to select proper arm synergies for a given task improves the planning performance and the resulting plan., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

Physics-based motion planning is a challenging task, since it requires the computation of the robot motions while allowing possible interactions with (some of) the obstacles in the environment. Kinodynamic motion planners equipped with a dynamic engine acting as state propagator are usually used for that purpose. The difficulties arise in the setting of the adequate forces for the interactions and because these interactions may change the pose of the manipulatable obstacles, thus either facilitating or preventing the finding of a solution path. The use of knowledge can alleviate the stated difficulties. This paper proposes the use of an enhanced state propagator composed of a dynamic engine and a low-level geometric reasoning process that is used to determine how to interact with the objects, i.e. from where and with which forces. The proposal, called ¿-PMP can be used with any kinodynamic planner, thus giving rise to e.g. ¿-RRT. The approach also includes a preprocessing step that infers from a semantic abstract knowledge described in terms of an ontology the manipulation knowledge required by the reasoning process. The proposed approach has been validated with several examples involving an holonomic mobile robot, a robot with differential constraints and a serial manipulator, and benchmarked using several state-of-the art kinodynamic planners. The results showed a significant difference in the power consumption with respect to simple physics-based planning, an improvement in the success rate and in the quality of the solution paths., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

[ES] En este trabajo se presenta un análisis cinemático aplicado a dos manipuladores serie redundantes: el Kuka LWR 4+ y el ABB Yumi. En particular se deriva la cinemática directa para ambos manipuladores y se resuelve el problema de la cinemática inversa. Para el Kuka LWR 4+ dicha solución se obtiene en forma analítica, mientras que para el ABB Yumi se sigue un enfoque analítico y numérico. Además, se calculan simbólicamente tanto las singularidades del Kuka LWR 4+ como las direcciones singulares asociadas a estas. Este estudio contribuye al conocimiento cinemático de dos manipuladores redundantes de gran actualidad e interés para la comunidad robótica, y proporciona información útil para el diseño de diferentes algoritmos y leyes de control., [EN] This paper presents a kinematic analysis of two redundant serial manipulators: Kuka LWR 4+ and ABB Yumi. This analysis includes the derivation of the forward kinematics for both manipulators as well as the solution of the inverse kinematic problem. For the Kuka LWR 4+ this solution is analytical whereas for the ABB Yumi an analytical and numerical approach is proposed. Besides, the singularities of the Kuka LWR 4+ are obtained symbolically and the singular directions associated are calculated. This study intends to increase the kinematic knowledge of two actual redundant manipulators as well as to provide valuable information that can be used in the definition of different algorithms or control laws., Este trabajo ha sido realizado en parte gracias al apoyo de
los proyectos DPI2013-40882-P, DPI2014-57757-R y las becas
pre-doctorales BES-2012-059884 y BES-2012-054899.