Low-cost haptic glove for grasp precision improvement in Virtual Reality-Based Post-Stroke Hand Rehabilitation

Stroke in Algeria is one of the most important causes of severe physical disability. Upper limb paralysis is also most common in stroke patients, which severely affecting their daily life. Therefore, it is important to help stroke patients to improve the quality of their life. In this article, we have proposed a novel system based on virtual reality for fine motor rehabilitation. Because the sense of touch is essential to the patient's daily activities, we have integrated haptic feedback into our system (vibrating glove), this is to help the patient to perform rehabilitation exercises. The proposed vibrating glove is equipped with five small and flat vibrating motor discs (one on each finger); these motors are controlled by ESP8266 board. This system has been tested on two patients with stroke. The preliminary results show that the system can help patients recover fine motor skills.