A Robot-Mediated Assessment of Tinetti Balance scale for Sarcopenia Evaluation in Frail Elderly*

Aging society is characterized by a high prevalence of sarcopenia, which is considered one of the most common health problems of the elderly population. Sarcopenia is due to the age-related loss of muscle mass and muscle strength. Recent literature findings highlight that the Tinetti Balance Assessment (TBA) scale is used to assess the sarcopenia in elderly people. In this context, this article proposes a model for sarcopenia assessment that is able to provide a quantitative assessment of TBA-gait motor parameters by means of a cloud robotics approach. The proposed system is composed of cloud resources, an assistive robot namely ASTRO and two inertial wearable sensors. Particularly, data from two inertial sensors (i.e., accelerometers and gyroscopes), placed on the patient’s feet, and data from ASTRO laser sensor (position in the environment) were analyzed and combined to propose a set of motor features correspondent to the TBA gait domains. The system was preliminarily tested at the hospital of “Fondazione Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza” in Italy. The preliminary results suggest that the extracted set of features is able to describe the motor performance. In the future, these parameters could be used to support the clinicians in the assessment of sarcopenia, to monitoring the motor parameters over time and to propose personalized care-plan.