Deans' stroke musings: Grasping a new reality

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Grasping a new reality

Should be able to repurpose this with some modification to help us open and close our fingers.
http://bsclarified.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/grasping-a-new-reality/

Mindful of the ageing population in Japan, engineers are motivated to develop robots that could one day assist the elderly in their daily tasks. Developing a robotic hand that shows dexterity and variable pressure capabilities is the first step in creating robots that will be able to perform everyday tasks.

In the October issue of Smart Materials and Synthesis (doi:10.1088/0964-1726/20/10/105015), Dr. Nagase of Kwansei Gakuin University in Sanda, Japan and his colleagues describe their design for a new robotic hand that mimics the dexterity and grasping abilities of a human hand. Not only does the hand perform similarly to a human hand, its size and weight are almost identical to the average adult hand.

Robotic hand developed by Dr. Nagase at Kwansei Gakuin University and his colleagues

Perhaps future robots will be modelled after humans so that it will be more comfortable when the robots assist the elderly. Wouldn’t you think it is intimidating to have a large robotic hand turn the page for you as you read?

The robotic hand has four fingers attached to a palm, and each finger consists of three joints that allow the fingers to bend and flex. The palm and the ‘bones’ that make up the fingers are made of ABS resin. Silicone rubber tubes with Kevlar fibres inside as reinforcement encase the ‘bones’ and form individual fingers.

http://ist.ksc.kwansei.ac.jp/~nagase/index_e.html

A balloon actuator causes the hand to open and close. The balloon actuator consists of a silicone tube that is sealed at one end and expands to produce a balloon when compressed air is supplied through the opened end. A metal ‘tendon’ is wrapped around the balloon and expands when the balloon expands. This forms a pulley system and acts as the joints in each finger.

The balloon actuators allow individual fingers to be controlled, so the hand can hold objects in different ways:

Fully grasp an object with the fingers and thumb
Pinch an object using the thumb and index finger
Support an object using the fingers as a platform and the thumb to hold an object

***Watch the robotic hand in action on Dr. Nagase’s website: Robot handic holding a paper cup