Novel mixed active hand exoskeleton and assistive arm device for intensive rehabilitative treatment for stroke patients

Abstract

This paper presents a novel rehabilitative platform designed to provide a functional upper-limb task specific training for hemiparetic chronic stroke patients. The system provides arm weight support and robotic assistance of the hand closing/opening skill. A graphical interface allows clinicians to administer different virtual reality scenarios and to customize training tasks providing progressive complexity based on patients motor skills. In order to assess motor function recovery along the whole treatment, objective performance metrics have been extracted and analyzed, showing an overall improvement of upper limb motor function after the treatment period.