Haptic Device for Capturing and Simulating Hand Manipulation Rehabilitation

This paper describes the preliminary development of a haptic setup for capturing and simulating musculoskeletal assessment and manipulation of the hand. A haptic device, called MasterFinger-2, is used for capturing one massage technique and one joint manipulation technique, and also for simulating this manipulation technique that can be used in both assessment and treatment of the hand. First, works developed demonstrate that an application of haptic devices enable quantitative characterization of forces and positions used in manipulation of musculoskeletal structures. Second, an application for simulation is developed using the MasterFinger-2 to display (both visually and haptically) manipulations of one joint of the hand around three axes. The novel aspects of this approach are the use of a multifinger device for capture, simulation, and modeling the movement of a biological joint for haptic simulation across three axes, each with nonlinear behavior.