Grasping and manipulation are critical for many activities of daily living. However, current approaches to grasp rehabilitation do not measure coordination of fingertip forces nor provide metrics for feedback to the user as an aid in regaining fingertip coordination. This paper presents a low-cost mechatronic approach to design and develop a portable and commercially viable grasp rehabilitation device. The performance of the newly developed grasp rehabilitator is compared with an existing research-grade grasping device on a grip and lift task. The results suggest that the newly developed grasp rehabilitator can provide key force measurements that are equivalent to the ones provided by the research-grade grasping device, indicating its validity and potential viability for rehabilitation.

Volume Subject Area:
Orthopedics and Rehabilitation
Topics:
Design, Feedback, Force measurement, Grasping, Rehabilitation devices
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