A novel haptic interface and control algorithm for robotic rehabilitation of stoke patients

Abstract

Rehabilitation robots are gradually becoming popular for stroke rehabilitation to improve motor recovery. By using a robot, the patient may perform the training more frequently on their own, but they must be motivated to do so. Therefore, this project develops a set of rehabilitation training programs with different haptic modalities on Compact Rehabilitation Robot (CR2) - a robot used to train upper and lower limbs reaching movement. The paper present the developed haptic interface, Haptic Sense with five configurable haptic modalities that include sensations of weight, wall, spring, sponge and visual amplification. A combination of several haptic modalities was implemented into virtual reality games, Water Drop - a progressive training game with up to nine levels of difficulties that requires user to move the cup to collect the water drops.