Novel Technologies of Exoskeleton Systems Applied to Rehabilitation for Hand Therapies: A Technological Review

Abstract

Movement disorders and injuries affect partial or full control of the parts of the body that affect your movement. Among the affected parts are the hands, which are vital to carrying out daily activities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) around 15% of the world’s population, that is, 1000 million people, suffers from some type of disability. Only in Peru, there are around 1 million 575 thousand people who suffer from a variety of deficiencies, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI). As a solution to this problem, hand exoskeletons emerge, which are devices that restore or improve the motor skills of the affected hand. In this review, 64 publications on hand exoskeletons were analyzed and classified into the following categories: trade names, acronyms or the name of the main author of the device, the degrees of freedom, the type of exoskeleton that can be passive or active, the mechanism that covers the parts of the hand, the types of movements that are performed, the kind of rehabilitation, the pathology that causes the injury or disability in the hand and the technology readiness level.