A Versatile Hand Grip Design for Concise Arm and Hand Rehabilitation Robot for Stroke Patients

The number of stroke patients in Thailand has been increasing over 28,000 people annually. Most stroke patients have a problem on motion functional movement, resulting in serious disability and directly affecting to daily living ability. Rehabilitation for improving motion functional movements for post-stroke patients is therefore highly required. This paper subsequently presents a unique design of a hand grip which is compatible to concise arm and hand rehabilitation robot for post-stroke patients. Most rehabilitation robots have focused on mechanics of robot body and grip stick, but this work alternatively focuses on the design of a new stable gripper as a robot end, which provides full function for training of arm and hand muscles. The design covers a controllable hand stick, a hand ball, and a curvature part for complete exercise. The use of self-rehabilitation also embeds some sensors connecting to smart phones or tablets. Such complements motivate patients to increase repetition of movements with the record outcomes and feedback. The design of cost-effective 3-Dimentional to be implemented will also be introduced.