  Majority of stroke survivors are left with poorly functioning paretic hands.
Current rehabilitation devices have failed to motivate the patients enough to
continue rehabilitation exercises. The objective of this project, MIDAS
(Multi-sensorial Immersive Dynamic Autonomous System) is a proof of concept by
using an immersive system to improve motivation of stroke patients for hand
rehabilitation. MIDAS is intended for stroke patients who suffer from light to
mild stroke. MIDAS is lightweight and portable. It consists of a hand
exoskeleton subsystem, a Virtual Reality (VR) subsystem, and an olfactory
subsystem. Altogether, MIDAS engages four out of five senses during
rehabilitation. To evaluate the efficacy of MIDAS a pilot study consisting of
three sessions is carried out on five stroke affected patients. Subsystems of
MIDAS are added progressively in each session. The game environment, sonic
effects, and scent released is carefully chosen to enhance the immersive
experience. 60% of the scores of user experience are above 40 (out of 56). 96%
Self Rehabilitation Motivation Scale (SRMS) rating shows that the participants
are motivated to use MIDAS and 87% rating shows that MIDAS is exciting for
rehabilitation. Participants experienced elevated motivation to continue stroke
rehabilitation using MIDAS and no undesired side effects were reported.
