Tumbler

Tumbler is a home rehabilitation system built around a laptop camera and an ordinary drinking glass.

After a stroke, or with Parkinson's, much of rehabilitation happens at home, between visits to a therapist. But the equipment sent home often has no place in everyday life, and it is easy to put in a drawer and forget.

Tumbler uses what is already there. A laptop sits on the table, screen facing the person, its camera reading the glass held in front of it. Virtual flowerpots appear on the screen. The person waters them with a glass from their own kitchen, or turns the glass over and uses it as a lamp to reveal the colour of each flower.

The two tasks use the same glass but ask the arm for different things. Pouring needs only the forearm to turn. Turning the glass all the way over needs far more than that, so the shoulder has to help. The glass never changes. What is asked of it does.

Neither movement was invented for the system. Pouring water between two glasses is already part of the Action Research Arm Test, a standard assessment of arm function, and stroke rehabilitation guidelines name pouring among the everyday skills that practice should imitate.

No video is stored. The camera keeps only what the glass did, where it was and how it was held, and a therapist uses that to set what the next week asks for.