Dexterit-E 3.9.5 Oct 2023

Dexterit-E 3.9.5 is considered a mandatory update for users of MATLAB 2019b. The release addresses a problem in the Task Development Kit (TDK) and requires tasks to be recompiled after the patch is applied. In addition, KST collected with a prior release of Dexterit-E 3.9 may require re-analyzing.

Kinematics & Exam Events may not increment for 2 Data Frames  

Who is affected: 

You are only affected by this issue if: 

  1. You are using MATLAB 2019b. 
  2. We have not found any evidence that the problem affected MATLAB 2015aSP1. 
  3. Your task was compiled with the 3.9.2, 3.9.3 or 3.9.4 TDK 
    1. ATTENTION: we have not found any evidence that the problem affects tasks compiled with 3.9.0 or 3.9.1 TDK, however, it is possible they might be affected. Our investigation has shown that tasks which show this problem when compiled with 3.9.2 TDK do not produce any problems when compiled with 3.9.1, however, it is unclear why we observed that difference.
  4. Data is recorded at 1 kHz. 

Root cause of the Problem: The Simulink Rate Transfer block has settings for “Deterministic data transfer”. It was found that this setting was incorrectly off for some of the Rate Transfer blocks that are part of the TDK.  

Effect: 

The effects of this issue manifest in either of two ways: 

  1. Any channel of recorded data may have the exact same value for 2 times steps in a row even though the value should change. For position, velocity and acceleration values this should have minimal effect on analysis. Only data recorded at 1 kHz could be affected. 
  2. Exam events that are only set in Stateflow for a single Stateflow timestep may be lost. This would be an unusual way for a task to be programmed. This following image illustrates potentially affected vs unaffected exam events. 
  3. Video frame acknowledgements may be recorded incorrectly, which will lead Dexterit-E Explorer to incorrectly interpret as video frame drops

 Scope of Impact: Not all tasks (custom or Kinarm Standard) are affected by this issue. Tasks that are affected are inconsistent between Kinarm Labs. If a task is affected on a specific machine, then every run of the task is affected. However, the same task may run without problems on another system. 

The Kinarm Standard Tests that we have found to be affected, the impact and the needed fix are:  

KST  Impact  Dexterit-E version required for analysis. 
Ball on Bar  None  Any 
Object Hit  Analysis would not complete on affected data.  3.10.2 
Spatial Span  None  Any 
Trail Making  The % complete of the exam may be incorrect.  3.10.2 

These test types were only affected on some Kinarm Labs using MATLAB 2019b. 

 Detection: The only reliable way to tell if this bug has affected your data is to use Dexterit-E Explorer to see if there are regularly recorded video frame drops (single or sporadic drops are not indicative of the bug). Note: if such clusters of video frame drops are observed, they are not actually video frame drops, but are a confirmed artifact of the bug.

If you would like assistance determining if any of your recorded data was affected, then you can use Help -> Generate log in Dexterit-E. The generated ZIP file can be emailed to Support@kinarm.com. 

To correct the problem:

  1. Install the Dexterit-E 3.9.5 Task Development Kit.
  2. In MATLAB 2019b navigate to the folder where the Simulink model for your task is located.
  3. Run cleanslrt() at the MATLAB prompt (this script removes all intermediate generated files).
  4. Compile your task.
  5. Update your version of Dexterit-E to 3.9.5.

Dexterit-E 3.9.4 November 2022

Dexterit-E 3.9.4 patch has been released to address a significant MATLAB bug affecting the collection of Gaze data. This bug only affects users of MATLAB 2019b and Dexterit-E 3.9.
Per the release notes, you are only affected by this problem if:
1. You compile your tasks with MATLAB R2019b, AND
2. Your task has compile time optimizations on: Hardware Settings -> Code Generation -> Compiler optimization level = Optimizations on (faster runs))
We are also taking this opportunity to fix a bug for NHP users of NI card 6071e and 6713. See the release notes for Dexterit-E for a full list of changes with 3.9.4.

*Update* Dexterit-E  and Dexterit-E Explorer 3.9.3 released.

Dexterit-E & Dexterit-E Explorer 3.9.3 contains important bug fixes and usability enhancements. . This is considered a mandatory update.

NOTE: A bug in the exporting of analysis results for Trails A+B was found, which has been present since Dexterit-E 3.7. Any studies using Trails A+B should re-analyze their data. This bug does not affect studies that used Trails A alone, or Trails B alone. 

Details of the bug: When outputting Trail Making analysis results to CSV, Dexterit-E incorrectly treated Trails A+B as if there were only Trails B data. While fixing this bug, a new feature was added to improve clarity on what is being output: there are now 3 explicit options: Trail Making A, Trail Making B, Trail Making A+B.  This change has been implemented in both Dexterit-E and Dexterit-E Explorer.

“See the release notes for Dexterit-E or Dexterit-E Explorer for a full list of changes with 3.9.3.”

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Summary of release notes for Dexterit-E 3.9.2 (Oct 2021)

Dexterit-E 3.9.2 contains important stability fixes for rare error conditions. This is considered a mandatory update.

Dexterit-E 3.9.1 contains bug fixes and usability enhancements.

Dexterit-E 3.9.1 contains a critical bug fix for users of the Kinarm Gaze Tracker. There was a problem in Dexterit-E 3.9.0 where gaze events (e.g., blink start, blink end, etc.) were always stored at time zero. For Kinarm Gaze Tracker users this is considered a necessary update.

NOTE: Some continuous time Simulink blocks (as opposed to discrete time blocks) can cause CPU overload conditions when using Dexterit-E 3.9 even though the same task may have worked in Dexterit-E 3.8 or earlier. All continuous time blocks can be replaced using a discrete equivalent. If you have a task where this problem happens, contact Kinarm support for assistance.

NOTE: The Custom Task Programming Guide for Dexterit-E 3.9 states erroneously that exam files can be up to 4 GB in length. Exam files can actually be up to 2 GB in length. For a KINARM Exoskeleton collecting 16 channels of analog data (40 channels of data total) this equates to a single exam of 15-20 hours. The duration will vary depending on the number of channels of data collected, complexity of the subject display and the compression of the data.

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(As of March 2021) Kinarm is pleased to simultaneously release:
  • Dexterit-E™ 3.9.0; and
  • Dexterit-E Explorer™  3.9.0
Some of the more noteworthy changes in Dexterit-E 3.9.0 include:
  • New Kinarm Standard Tests
    • Arm Movement Matching – the purpose of this test is to assess the ability of a subject to perceive motion of their arm in the horizontal workspace.
    • Arm Posture Perturbation –  the purpose of this test is to assess the ability of a subject to respond to unexpected disturbances of the arm when maintaining their hand at a spatial goal. (Exo only.)
  • MATLAB 2019b support
  • Input files for Task Programs – it is now possible to pass a user-generated file from the Dexterit-E Computer to the Robot Computer which can then be used in your Task Program. (This feature requires a Robot Computer with PN 13107 or higher.)
  • See the release notes for Dexterit-E and Dexterit-E Explorer for a full list of new features.

When you upgrade to Dexterit-E 3.9, you will need to:

  • upgrade to Dexterit-E Explorer 3.9.0 at the same time.
    • Dexterit-E 3.9 uses a new file format to save exam data that is not backward compatible with previous (1.5 and earlier) releases of Dexterit-E Explorer.
  • obtain the latest release of the Kinarm Analysis Scripts in order to load data recorded with Dexterit-E 3.9 or later. The updated MATLAB scripts are backwards compatible with previous releases and include several enhancements for usability and performance.
  • contact support@kinarm.com to obtain a new license key for Dexterit-E 3.9. 
    • As always, Dexterit-E Explorer does not require a license and can be run on any Windows 64 bit or Mac OSx computer.

All installers are available for download once logged into the Software Downloads page.