Robot Aided Hand Rehabilitation
The purpose of this device is to deliver therapy to patients affected by neurological injury, orthopedic accident or arthritis, recovering their abilities to grasp. Besides it can be used to collect data on patient hand grasping level and helping therapist in quantifying some biological parameters and comparing the results between effects from different therapies. Due to the reduced dimension, the above mentioned device can be developed in a portable version, able to be used by patients directly at home. Another use of the Modular device for Grasping rehabilitation can be a tool for studying and monitoring the grasping level during various tasks.
Rehabilitation of Grasping also means to increase the dexterity and augmenting significantly the ability of a peatient to perform task of daily living. With this assumption the shape of the mechanism was chosen in order to imitate the most common shape a human needs in the simple grasping task: cylindrical one.
The kinematic structure of the device is simple but efficient; it consist in 1 DOF mechanism able to convert a rotary motion of an electric motor in translational displacements disposed in multiple different radial directions.
The Device has a maximum angle or rotation of 180° before reaching a singular position where the equation of motion has two different solutions; in order to avoid the singularity of the mechanism a mechanical stopper has been introduced; the maximum diameter reached by the mechanism at 180° is 80 mm while the minimum value in close configuration is 40 mm .
The Device also includes a passive mechanism in order to compensate for Hypertonia of the patient’s hand; this solution allows to add a parallel torque source to the one delivered by the electric motor, creating a torque and displacement offset.
REFERENCE
MASIA L., KREBS H.I., CAPPA P., HOGAN N. DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A HAND-MODULE FOR WHOLE ARM REHABILITATION FOLLOWING STROKE. IEEE TRANSACTION ON MECHATRONICS VOL.12, N°4, AUGUST 2007
MASIA, L., KREBS, H.I., CAPPA, P., HOGAN, N., “DESIGN, CHARACTERIZATION AND IMPEDANCE LIMITS OF A HAND ROBOT”, IEEE ICORR2007, INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON REHABILITATION ROBOTICS, 13-15 June, Noordvijk, Netherlands.
MASIA L., KREBS H.I., CAPPA P., HOGAN N. (2006). WHOLE-ARM REHABILITATION FOLLOWING STROKE: HAND MODULE. IEEE BIOROB2006 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BIOROBOTICS, PISA FEBRUARY 2006.
MASIA L, KREBS H.I. (2005). “AN APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR CONVERTING ROTATIONAL MOTION INTO RADIAL MOTION” MIT, USA. PATENT PENDING