Deans' stroke musings: Design and preliminary evaluation of the FINGER rehabilitation robot: controlling challenge and quantifying finger individuation during musical computer game play

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.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Design and preliminary evaluation of the FINGER rehabilitation robot: controlling challenge and quantifying finger individuation during musical computer game play

I could have used something like this. When will your therapy department get this? It talks about assisting finger movement so I can't tell if this would even work for me. I would need maximum assistance, I have no individual control of finger movements.
Picture and more explanations from here:
https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/robotics/designing-a-soft-robot

http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/11/1/10/abstract

Hossein Taheri, Justin B Rowe, David Gardner, Vicki Chan, Kyle Gray, Curtis Bower, David J Reinkensmeyer and Eric T Wolbrecht

Author Affiliations

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Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 2014, 11:10 doi:10.1186/1743-0003-11-10
Published: 4 February 2014

Abstract (provisional)

Background

This paper describes the design and preliminary testing of FINGER (Finger Individuating Grasp Exercise Robot), a device for assisting in finger rehabilitation after neurologic injury. We developed FINGER to assist stroke patients in moving their fingers individually in a naturalistic curling motion while playing a game similar to Guitar Hero(R)1. The goal was to make FINGER capable of assisting with motions where precise timing is important.

Methods

FINGER consists of a pair of stacked single degree-of-freedom 8-bar mechanisms, one for the index and one for the middle finger. Each 8-bar mechanism was designed to control the angle and position of the proximal phalanx and the position of the middle phalanx. Target positions for the mechanism optimization were determined from trajectory data collected from 7 healthy subjects using color-based motion capture. The resulting robotic device was built to accommodate multiple finger sizes and finger-to-finger widths. For initial evaluation, we asked individuals with a stroke (n = 16) and without impairment (n = 4) to play a game similar to Guitar Hero(R) while connected to FINGER.

Results

Precision design, low friction bearings, and separate high speed linear actuators allowed FINGER to individually actuate the fingers with a high bandwidth of control (-3 dB at approximately 8 Hz). During the tests, we were able to modulate the subject's success rate at the game by automatically adjusting the controller gains of FINGER. We also used FINGER to measure subjects' effort and finger individuation while playing the game.

Conclusions

Test results demonstrate the ability of FINGER to motivate subjects with an engaging game environment that challenges individuated control of the fingers, automatically control assistance levels, and quantify finger individuation after stroke.