Customizable Home Rehabilitation Robot for Hemiplegic Patients to Improve Finger Independence

In this paper, we proposed a home-based hand rehabilitation robot that can be customized according to the recovery stage of a patient with hemiplegia. Since the hemiplegic hand is characterized by an abnormal gripping posture, the hardware design of home-based hand rehabilitation robots must fully consider this characteristic. Some hand rehabilitation robots of previous studies, which did not fully consider abnormal gripping, cannot be applied to patients with severe gripping, preventing patients with hemiplegia from undergoing continuous at-home rehabilitation. To overcome this issue, we designed a robot that can be freely assembled by the patient to fit their hand posture. The proposed robot comprises a foundation that forms the base and two types of detachable fingerplates to fit the hand posture. In addition, a customizable assistive mechanism that assists finger movement was developed. This paper presents a detailed hardware design with the experimental results of assistance, such as the force and finger joint angle change.