A virtual training sports system for measuring human hand impedance

Abstract

The dynamic characteristics of human upper extremities are usually expressed by mechanical impedance. Although many studies have discussed human impedance characteristics, there are no reports on the practical application of human impedance to rehabilitation. This paper proposes a new virtual training system which can measure task-related impedance of a trainee. The proposed system utilizes the robot consisting of direct drive type slider table to evaluate trainee's hand impedance quantitatively. Experimental results show that human hand impedance is possible to be estimated in the preliminary phase of motion during virtual sports.