Robotic Fingers in Reach-to-Grasp Tasks of Rehabilitation

The REHAROB robotic upper limb rehabilitation system was improved with a custom-designed and developed hand/finger therapy module. The new module extends the scope of the applicable motion therapy from passive to active reach-to-grasp activities of daily living tasks, and the range of treated anatomical joints was also extended to every proximal and distal upper limb anatomical joint. Finger exercising and object grasping are supported with a pair of two degree-of-freedom (DOF) robotic fingers. One of the robotic fingers moves the index/middle/ring fingers together, whereas the other robotic finger moves the thumb. A novel hypothesis was established, analyzed, and tested for setting the orientation of the robotic finger moving the thumb. The robotic thumb is not aligned with the patient's thumb; its orientation is optimized in the patient's hand reference system to maximize the efficiency in the opposite grasping task. While most concurrent systems utilize virtual objects for grasping tasks, the REHAROB system exercises five carefully selected reach-and-grasp type activities of daily living (ADL) with real objects. Actuating the human finger phalanges through custom development finger orthoses is described. An advanced feature of the hand/finger therapy module is the left-right hand side changeover by only alternating the orientation of the robotic fingers and exchanging the finger orthoses.