Haptic Exercises for Measuring Improvement of Post-Stroke Rehabilitation Patients

Rehabilitation exercises supervised by occupational therapists (OTs), involve applying task-oriented forces to the injured/disabled area to regain, for instance, strength and range of motion. Haptic interfaces have shown clear benefits in imitating therapists' exercises with the possibilities of position, grasping angles and force capturing. In this paper, we present two haptic-based virtual reality exercises for stroke patients undergoing rehabilitation to recover all, or some, of their lost hand functions. The two exercises, the squeeze ball exercise and the maze exercise, were implemented using the CyberForce system. The squeeze ball exercise helps patients recover the action of hand grasping whereas the maze exercise aims at increasing the steadiness of the patient's movement. Our measurements of these exercises show that we can continuously evaluate the patient's improvement.