Haptic Interface for Finger Exercise and Virtual Rehabilitation

A haptic device with two active degrees of freedom and a tendon driven transmission system was designed, built and tested. It was constructed as a lightweight mechanism with a small workspace that wraps a finger workspace and can generate forces up to 10 N suitable for finger exercise. The control loop and user application were implemented on a personal computer within the MS Windowsreg environment. Together with the device an application including several different experiment types has been developed. The system has been evaluated in group of stroke patients during a one month therapy. The results for two experiment types are presented. The progression of the affected hand side for patients is observed to be higher than for nonaffected side but on the contrary the mean values of the relevant parameters at nonaffected side for patients are higher than for affected side