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Impact of COVID 19

Posted on Mar 25, 2020

Like all businesses around the world, we are feeling the impacts of COVID 19.  To keep you abreast of the impact, we’ve started this blog:

First post: 6-Mar-20

Last update: 25-Mar-20

  1. Parts
    • Computers: Advantech’s supply chain from Asia has been reinstated, however their California site is now closed.  We will be rationing Dexterit-E computer replacements until normal lead times are restored.
      • We have sufficient stock to manage the “normal” rate of computer failures and current production requirements.
      • We may need to delay shipping of Win10 Dexterit-E computers to customers requiring an upgrade to meet Win10 compliance.
  2. Lab Orders
    • Regular production has not been impacted.  We will do our best to advise customers with open purchase orders of any changes in our committed delivery.
    • Installation travel may become a challenge as borders close and employees returning from installations are put in obligatory quarantine.
      • as of 13-Mar-20, we have suspended all installations outside of Canada
      • as of 25-Mar-20, we have suspended all installations
  3. Kinarm Camp
    • We are hoping that travel restrictions will be relaxed in time to run Kinarm Camp in June.  We will continue to monitor the situation.
    • Each camper should assess their own travel risk individually based on their country of origin and current restrictions that may be in effect.
    • If the camp is cancelled, or if an attendee wishes to cancel their registration, a full refund will be offered.
  4. Support
    • as of 13-Mar-20, our support team is working from home.  Please continue to use the support@kinarm.com email.  We will endeavour to provide a first response within 24h.
  5. Phone Calls
    • Please use our regular phone numbers.  We have forward our key lines of X 1 (Sales), X2 (Support) and X3 (Accounting) to personal cell phones.
    • If you don’t reach a person, please send an email to any of sales@kinarm.com , support@kinarm.com or accounting@kinarm.com

Kinarm Camp 2020: Registration is now Closed.

Posted on Jan 13, 2020

Our 7th annual Kinarm Camp, will be held Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12, 2020 in Kingston, Ontario.

The objective of the Camp is to provide focused training on Custom Task development for Kinarm Labs. The five day agenda is tailored to Basic Researchers and will provide hands-on learning on the use of MATLAB Simulink and Stateflow to develop Custom Task Programs for the KINARM Lab. New users, graduate students, and post docs are all invited to attend. Clinical researchers with an interest in Custom Task development are also welcome to attend.

The preliminary agenda can be viewed here: https://kinarm.com/download/kinarm-camp-agenda/

Attendance was limited to 16 registrants.  If you would like to be put on the waiting list please email: anne @ kinarm.com. 

Information on getting to Kingston is available here: Travelling to Kingston for Kinarm Camp  When making bookings, please note that camp ends at 12 pm on Friday.

The reading list is available here: https://kinarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Kinarm-Camp-Reading-List.pdf 

This is what last year’s campers said about their experience:

As someone with minimal computer programming experience, I still found the KINARM camp workshops accessible. Over the course of 5 days, I was able to program my own custom task and I feel like I now have more confidence to experiment (and troubleshoot) with the functionality of simulink and stateflow on my own.
 
KINARM Camp provided me with the tools to feel confident with custom task programming. Every aspect of the camp was well thought out and the instructors were extremely knowledgeable and helpful.
 
KINARM Camp really helped me to take my training to the next level. The content taught was invaluable, and the exercises were practical and appropriate for all levels of KINARM expertise.
 
KINARM Camp indeed helped me to become a really good friend of KINARM software and hardware.
 
2019 Kinarm Campers

Win10 Compliance

Posted on Feb 5, 2020

Advisory Notices:

Do NOT upgrade your Dexterit-E/GUI Computer to Windows 10 without our Upgrade Kit!

As the Dexterit-E computer is customized to run your Kinarm Lab, the Windows operating system cannot be upgraded to Windows 10 without adversely affecting your Kinarm Lab. Dexterit-E will NOT work.

For those of you who upgraded your Dexterit-E Computer after 1-Oct-18, please complete this questionnaire BT084 Win10 Upgrade Questionnaire.30-Jan-20 and contact sales@kinarm.com.  All customers in Japan will be provided with a kit through Miyuki Giken.

We kindly ask that you request the upgrade kit by 31-Jan-21.

If your Dexterit-E Computer is older than 1-Oct-18, and you want to upgrade to Windows 10, depending on the age of your Dexterit-E/GUI computer, you have one of two options:

Option 1: If your Dexterit-E Computer is PN 13108 or 13950 (see label on back of computer; looks like an Advantech ‘silver box’ computer), you can purchase our Upgrade Kit.

  • This kit will include a dedicated video card that has been tested to meet Kinarm requirements. (Win10 does not support our required video performance.)
  • If you have PN 13108, you also have the option of purchasing a dedicated back-up drive that was introduced in the 13950 model.

Option 2: If you have an older ‘black box’ GUI computer (PN 10885 or 11104), your computer cannot be upgraded and must be replaced. Contact: sales@kinarm.com for a quote for a Dexterit-E computer upgrade.

  • Alternatively, disconnect your Dexterit-E computer from the university’s network to meet their compliance requirements. Dexterit-E does not need an active connection to the internet to run.

Dexterit-E 3.8.0 and Dexterit-E Explorer 1.5.0 released!!!

Posted on Dec 5, 2019

Kinarm’s development team is proud to release Dexterit-E 3.8.0 and Dexterit-E Explorer 1.5.0 with lots of improvements for usability and task development. We are thrilled to be able to deliver the long list of tangible improvements, both big and small, that this release offers. A complete list of changes is included in the release notes with each product.  Below we’ve highlighted the main enhancements for each product.

Dexterit-E 3.8.0

Study Sessions

Study Protocols were introduced in Dexterit-E 3.7 in order to add task ordering and provide a user interface for performing studies. In Dexterit-E 3.8 we have extended this functionality with the concept of Study Sessions. Within a Study Protocol, you can now define one or more Study Sessions, which allow a subject to be assessed multiple times at pre-defined points during the same Study, e.g. 60 days post intervention, 90 days post intervention.

When Study Sessions are used with KST, the upcoming release of Dexterit-E Explorer will be able to create session and longitudinal reports based on those sessions. These new report types allow you to see Task Scores for Kinarm Standard Tests that were run as part of a Study. Please see the Dexterit-E Explorer documentation for further details.

Enhanced Video Instructions

The capabilities for video instructions have been extended in this release of Dexterit-E. Audio is now supported, such that videos can now include pre-recorded verbal instructions. In addition, Dexterit-E now supports a wider selection of video formats and CODECs for these instructions (AVI, MOV, MP4), allowing users to create video instructions from a wide selection of video editing software.

Editing Task Protocols

When editing Task Protocols it is now possible to tell which Trial Protocols, targets and loads are going to be used. Each table will automatically highlight those rows that are identified as ones which will be run, based on the contents of the Block Table and TP Table.

Execution Order of Trials

There are two new ways to manage and control the ordering of trials when a task is run: one enhancement is with the Block Table, and one is available through custom task programming.

Block Table enhancement: when editing a Task Protocol, the Block Table has been enhanced to allow nested lists of Trial Protocols which must remain contiguous after randomization. Furthermore, these contiguous lists can be specified to either be non-randomized or internally randomized. The following table contains two examples:

 

TP List Possible Randomized result
1-5, [10,11,12] 4, 2, 11, 10, 12, 1, 5, 3

(bracketed items are kept together, but randomized internally)
1-5, (10,11,12) 4, 2, 10, 11, 12, 1, 5, 3

(bracketed items are together and not randomized)

 

 

Custom Task Programming enhancement: there is now the possibility to determine trial order at runtime. When programming a Custom Task, there is a new optional input on the GUI Control block that allows a task programmer to specify the next Trial Protocol to run. In this way you can calculate dynamically at runtime the trial ordering for your task. This feature completely ignores the Block Table within a Task Protocol

Integrating Kinarm Standard Tests with External Equipment

All Kinarm Standard Tasks have been updated to output digital TTL pulses on the standard National Instruments PCI-6229 that is purchased with many Kinarm Labs. These pulses provide timing and trial information to enable synchronization with external equipment.

Normative Modeling Updates – Elbow Stretch Inter-limb Z-scores

As part of our ongoing work to improve the accuracy of the normative models for KST, the algorithm to fit models to the normative data was updated to use weighted least-squares regression. This change was made to account for the heteroscedasticity in the data. While most normative models had negligible changes following this change, the inter-limb Z-scores of Elbow Stretch for female subjects collected using the Kinarm Exoskeleton, had very large changes; these data should be re-analyzed. See the Dexterit-E User Guide or KST Summary for more details.

Deprecation Notices

MATLAB: Dexterit-E 3.8 will be the last version of Dexterit-E to support MATLAB 2013a. Windows® OS: Dexterit-E 3.8 does not support Windows XP.

Robot Computer: Dexterit-E 3.8 will be the last version of Dexterit-E that supports Robot computer part number 10884. These Robot computers were last shipped in early 2011. If you are unsure of your Robot computer’s part number please contact Kinarm Support (support@kinarm.com).

Dexterit-E Explorer 1.5.0

MATLAB Integration

Dexterit-E Explorer can be used as a tool to initiate analysis of your collected data. MATLAB has long been the tool of choice to take your analysis to the next level. Now, within Dexterit-E Explorer you can push data directly to MATLAB. Newer versions of MATLAB (at least since 2017a) have an “engine” component that allows Dexterit-E Explorer to start MATLAB and pass data for analysis and plotting. Once you have configured Dexterit-E Explorer to use a particular version of MATLAB to integrate with, you can right-click on an exam file or the channel graph in order to transfer data to MATLAB.

CSV Exam Export

In recent years several other programming languages have become popular for data analysis, notably Python and R. Rather than try to build Kinarm Analysis Scripts for every possible language we have added the ability to output the kinematics and parameters of an exam file in a commonly readable format – Comma Separated Values (CSV). CSV is a text based format that any programming language can interpret. Kinarm Support will be providing example code for reading the CSV files that Dexterit-E Explorer will create.

Dexterit-E Explorer gives you the ability to right-click on a single exam file to export in CSV format, or to perform a bulk export of many exams to CSV.

Channel Graph Updates

This release of Dexterit-E Explorer contains several additions to the channel graph to enhance usability, including:

  • Right-clicking on a channel name in the channel list, or on an event name in the event list, will allow you to specify the colour you would like used to draw the channel or
  • If you use the mouse to “zoom” into an area on the channel graph, you can use <Ctrl+z> to undo the zoom (i.e., in case you zoomed into the wrong location).
  • If you click on the channel graph you can use the arrow keys to “slide” the zoom window around the Holding down <Alt> while using the arrows will zoom in. Holding <Ctrl> while using the arrows will zoom out.
  • If MATLAB integration is enabled, right-clicking in the channel graph gives you options to move the data in the graph to MATLAB or to plot the data in

Normative Modeling Updates – Elbow Stretch Inter-limb Z-scores

As part of our ongoing work to improve the accuracy of the normative models for KST, the algorithm to fit models to the normative data was updated to use weighted least-squares regression. This change was made to account for the heteroscedasticity in the data. While most normative models had negligible changes following this change, the inter-limb Z-scores of Elbow Stretch for female subjects collected using the Kinarm Exoskeleton, had very large changes. Previously analyzed data should be re-analyzed. See the Dexterit-E User Guide or KST Summary for more details.

 

To upgrade Dexterit-E or download Dexterit-E Explorer, go to the Software Downloads page of the Kinarm Website: https://www.kinarm.com/support/software-downloads/

Events Calendar

Posted on Oct 25, 2019

We love to demonstrate the benefits of Kinarm Labs and would love to see you at an upcoming meeting:

Upcoming Meetings Date Location Booth Number
MEDICA November 18 – 21, 2019 Messe Dusseldorf Hall 16, M37, Canadian Pavillion
KINARM Camp June 8-12, 2020 (tent) Kingston, ON  

 

Past Meetings Date Location Booth Number
International Brain Injury Meeting March 13-16, 2019 Toronto, ON #100
American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting May 4-10, 2019 Philadelphia, PA #208 in Technology Hub
RehabWeek June 24-28, 2019 Toronto, Metro Toronto Convention Centre #620
Neuroscience 2019 (SfN Annual Meeting) October 17-24, 2019 Chicago, IL #1873
       
       

 

Kinarm: after 20 years, coming together under one brand

Posted on Jun 27, 2019

To our valued Kinarm Lab users, collaborators and followers,

Today, June 27, 2019 is the day we announce our new company name: Kinarm.

It has been nearly 20 years since the publication of the first paper disclosing the novel instrument invented by Dr. Stephen Scott of Queen’s University at Kingston to enable his own research program.  KINARM, or Kinesiological Instrument for Normal and Altered Reaching Movements, has since spawned hundreds of research articles, not just by Scott LIMB Lab, but also by the more than 95+ Kinarm labs around the world.

Last January, we surveyed many of our current users for your feedback and asked you: what name do you know us by?  The answer was simple and resounding: Kinarm is how we are known.  Thus started a process to rethink our brand and today we announce the first milestone in that process.

As of today, our company is united with our core product under one name: Kinarm.

We are also introducing our new logo!

The Kinarm wordmark takes its inspiration from the common paradigm of our products and the solution they provide to addressing your basic and clinical research questions on the brain.  It is inspired by neurons connecting to each other, and a user holding the Kinarm End-Point handle or arm in the Kinarm Exoskeleton, and reaching their arm to perform tasks.
The uppercase “A” is taken from the original KINARM logo, and creates a precision point representing our core values of precision and scientific rigor. The reaching arm of the “K” could be interpreted as a magnifying glass searching for answers.

Legally, we remain incorporated as BKIN Technologies Ltd., and thus you may notice the BKIN name used in legal statements and financial documents such as invoices.

What doesn’t change is our commitment to you, our customers.  You told us we are: “pushing the boundaries as leaders [with] comprehensive solutions [that are] precise; user-friendly for clinicians, and flexible for researchers.”

Thank-you for your trust; we will continue to deliver just that.

For the entire team at Kinarm,

Anne Vivian-Scott, President & CEO

 

KINARM Camp 2019: We are at Capacity!

Posted on Jan 7, 2019

BKIN is pleased to announce that our 6th annual KINARM Camp, will be held Monday, May 13 to Friday noon, May 17, 2019 in Kingston, Ontario.

As of 24-Jan-19, the camp is full and registration has ended.  If you would like to be put on the waitlist, please email Anne at avivianscott @ bkintechnologies.com . 

The objective of the Camp is to provide focused training on Custom Task development for KINARM Labs. The five day agenda is tailored to Basic Researchers and will provide hands-on learning on the use of MATLAB Simulink and Stateflow to develop Custom Task Programs for the KINARM Lab. New users, graduate students, and post docs are all invited to attend. Clinical researchers with an interest in Custom Task development are also welcome to attend.

The preliminary agenda can be viewed here: KINARM Camp 2019.draft

Attendance is limited to 12 registrants, so please complete the registration form to hold your spot.

If you’re awaiting approvals, please complete the form nonetheless and note that your attendance is tentative.

2018 KINARM Campers

Attending RehabWeek?

Posted on Jan 7, 2019

Customers of BKIN Technologies can receive preferential registration rates for the upcoming RehabWeek conference in Toronto, June 2019.

In order to apply the membership discount, please proceed as follows:

  • Choose that you are a member of IISART during the registration process (https://www.rehabweek.org/registration/)
  • Enter the company-specific code IISART-BKIN-182584
  • When asked which conference you mainly plan to attend, choose INRS. This does not mean you cannot attend other conferences during the RehabWeek, but it helps to allocate resources.

Please feel free to share the code.