Upper-Limb Rehabilitation Exercises Using Haptic Device System

Upper-Limb Rehabilitation Exercises Using Haptic Device System

  We have applied a haptic device to the rehabilitation tool and made efforts to integrate the motion and sensory therapy, in order to avoid boredom that the patients usually feel. This rehabilitation tool system consists of a haptic device, a display, a computer, and software for training. When the user moves the grip, the haptic device provides a virtual force and it can either assists the movement of the arm or work against it. We have carried out a preliminary experiment with young and middle age group and elderly group. It aims to confirm the functionality of this system and to collect the reference data for the evaluation of the upper-limb disability. The results of our experiment show that the system could be used to evaluate the patient"s ability of upper-limb motion.