Development of a Hand Motion Assist Robot for Rehabilitation Therapy by Patient Self-Motion Control

TLDR

The study introduces a hand motion assist robot aimed at enabling patients with impaired hands to regain functional dexterity through self‑motion control. The robot is an 18‑degree‑of‑freedom exoskeleton that uses self‑motion control to drive the impaired hand via the healthy hand, supporting independent finger and thumb motions as well as combined hand‑wrist movements. Experimental results confirm the feasibility of the design specifications.

Abstract

This paper presents a new hand motion assist robot for rehabilitation therapy. The robot is an exoskeleton with 18 DOFs and a self-motion control, which allows the impaired hand of a patient to be driven by his or her healthy hand on the opposite side. To provide such potential that the impaired hand is able to recover its ability to the level of a functional hand, the hand motion assist robot is designed to support the flexion/extension and abduction/adduction motions of fingers and thumb independently as well as the opposability of the thumb. Moreover, it is designed to support a combination motion of the hand and the wrist. The design specifications and experimental results are shown.