A Two-Handed Ellipsoidal Device for Interactive Grasping and Gripping Rehabilitation Exercise

Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) should do various exercises to restore motor control for specific functions such as hand grasping and gripping. During daily exercises, they need intensive support from either therapists or caregivers in setting tasks and providing feedback, which creates a heavy workload. Thus, we introduce a two-handed ellipsoidal device to control computer games for interactive grasping and gripping rehabilitation training. The ellipsoidal device is designed to house an ESP32 microcontroller, a Wheeltec N100 IMU and an SF15 flexible thin-film pressure sensor so as to monitor children’s grip strength and wrist rotation. The sensing data can be used to control the characterizer motion in computer games. Preliminary user trials supported the implementation of such devices in hospitals for the hand grasping and gripping exercise and the cognition and coordination exercise between eyes, ears and hands.