Development of a haptic system for occupational hand therapy

Abstract

This paper presents a therapeutic haptic system. The platform consists of a hand exoskeleton - actuated by gearmotors - and a virtual interface that operates in conjunction with the Myo armband to collect electromyographic data from this eight-channel device. The system aims at serving as an auxiliary tool in occupational therapy routines to rehabilitate people with motor disabilities in their hands. The exoskeleton has a simple mechanical structure that requires five actuators for its operation and allows the hand to move throughout its nominal range of motion, as well as reproduce the movements essential to perform occupational therapy exercises. The virtual interface simulates a ball, with software-configurable size and stiffness and records data about the movements performed by the patient, the electromyographic activity, and the reaction forces applied by the exoskeleton. Similarly, the interface includes a pre-established routine of occupational therapy. We validated the correct operation of our haptic system through a protocol conducted by ten healthy test subjects. During that protocol, we recorded and plotted the information collected by the system. We obtained informed consent from all the research participants.