Abstract
Background: Stroke recovery would benefit tremendously if patients could continue their therapy at home while, for many patients, this requires a therapy device that helps them to overcome the hyper-flexion of wrist/fingers that is limiting their ability to open and use their hand.
Objective: To develop an interactive hand/wrist exoskeleton for post-stroke rehabilitation, that provides adaptive extension assistance at the wrist/fingers, interfaces with motivational games based on activities of daily-life, and can be used independently by patients at home.
Methods: Passive/active hand/wrist exoskeletons have been developed that provide the required interaction/assistance. They have been evaluated by therapists in clinical settings and used at home by 24 patients in three countries (for six weeks, ~15 [minutes/day] of active gaming). We used those experiences to create the definitive design of the SCRIPT hand/wrist exoskeleton.
Results: The hand/wrist exoskeleton is able to deal with joint misalignments by its wrist/finger mechanisms such as spring-loaded self-aligning double
parallelogram at the wrist, and individual hinged cantilevers with adjustable springs at the fingers/thumb for both extension assistance. Potentiometers at the wrist/finger/thumb measure flexion/extension which provide the interaction torque/forces via multiplying by the stiffness of the springs. The signals are used to interact with motivation games and to measure therapy progress.
Conclusion: Using technical/clinical evaluations, we improved on our initial design that had limitations in range of motion, measurement accuracy and maximum applicable assistance, while also reducing setup and device calibration times, since our definitive design of the interactive hand/wrist exoskeleton for post-stroke rehabilitation at home is a compromise between complexity and functionality.
Objective: To develop an interactive hand/wrist exoskeleton for post-stroke rehabilitation, that provides adaptive extension assistance at the wrist/fingers, interfaces with motivational games based on activities of daily-life, and can be used independently by patients at home.
Methods: Passive/active hand/wrist exoskeletons have been developed that provide the required interaction/assistance. They have been evaluated by therapists in clinical settings and used at home by 24 patients in three countries (for six weeks, ~15 [minutes/day] of active gaming). We used those experiences to create the definitive design of the SCRIPT hand/wrist exoskeleton.
Results: The hand/wrist exoskeleton is able to deal with joint misalignments by its wrist/finger mechanisms such as spring-loaded self-aligning double
parallelogram at the wrist, and individual hinged cantilevers with adjustable springs at the fingers/thumb for both extension assistance. Potentiometers at the wrist/finger/thumb measure flexion/extension which provide the interaction torque/forces via multiplying by the stiffness of the springs. The signals are used to interact with motivation games and to measure therapy progress.
Conclusion: Using technical/clinical evaluations, we improved on our initial design that had limitations in range of motion, measurement accuracy and maximum applicable assistance, while also reducing setup and device calibration times, since our definitive design of the interactive hand/wrist exoskeleton for post-stroke rehabilitation at home is a compromise between complexity and functionality.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - 21 May 2015 |
| Event | Congress on NeuroRehabilitation and Neural Repair 2015 - MECC , Maastricht , Netherlands Duration: 21 May 2015 → 22 May 2015 |
Conference
| Conference | Congress on NeuroRehabilitation and Neural Repair 2015 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Netherlands |
| City | Maastricht |
| Period | 21/05/15 → 22/05/15 |
| Other | Symposium on treatments to improve walking ability after stroke |
