Development of a finger-rehabilitation robot for fingers' flexibility rehabilitation exercise

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a finger-rehabilitation robot for rehabilitating stroke patients' fingers and other patient's paralyzed fingers. The developed finger-rehabilitation robot is composed of a thumb-rehabilitation robot instrument and four finger-rehabilitation robot instruments. The finger-rehabilitation robot could exercise fingers of patient for their rehabilitation, and it is a flexibility rehabilitation exercise. The finger-rehabilitation robot instruments move according to the trace which spread out the patient's fingers and then turn them inward for the fingers' flexibility, while at the same time performing the force control with the reference forces for fingers' safety. A control characteristic test of the developed finger-rehabilitation robot was carried out, and the result confirmed that the robot could be used for the flexibility rehabilitation exercise for the fingers of normal person and patients.