Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Four
Robot-Assisted Rehabilitation of Hand
Function After Stroke with the
HapticKnob and the HandCARE
Olivier Lambercy
∗
,†
, Ludovic Dovat
†
,BernaSalman
‡
, Roger Gassert
∗
,
Theodore E. Milner
§
, Etienne Burdet
∗∗
and Chee Leong Teo
†
∗
Rehabilitation Engineering Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
†
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore
‡
Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, Simon Fraser University,
Canada
§
Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, McGill University, Canada
∗∗
Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, UK
4.1 INTRODUCTION
Robot-assisted rehabilitation is one of the most promising approaches to com-
plement current clinical strategies for stroke rehabilitation. It could increase the
intensity of therapy with affordable costs, and offer advantages such as (i) pre-
cisely controllable assistance/resistance during movements, (ii) good repeatability,
(iii) objective and quantifiable measures of subject performance, and (iv) increased
training motivation through the use of interactive feedback, such as virtual reality
environments and stimulation of afferent pathways.
Over the last decades, upper limb robot-assisted rehabilitation after stroke has
focusedmainly on restoring arm function, yielding promising results that illustrate
the potential of robots to complement traditional therapies and support stroke
rehabilitation (Prange
et al.
(2006), Kwakkel
et al.
(2008)). However, arm function
alone is not sufficient to perform most activities of daily living (ADL), such as
eating/drinking, writing/typing and personal hygiene. In fact, hand function
is fundamental to all these daily activities. These observations motivated us to
develop robot-assisted rehabilitation strategies focusing on the distal parts of the
upper extremity, i.e. the wrist, hand and fingers.
