Hand Rehabilitation Support System Based on Self-Motion Control, with a Clinical Case Report

This paper presents a virtual reality-enhanced hand rehabilitation support system with a symmetric master-slave motion assistant for independent rehabilitation therapies. This system consists of a hand exoskeleton device and a lateral symmetric master-slave motion assistant system joined with a virtual reality (VR) environment. Since most disabilities caused by cerebral vascular accidents or bone fractures are hemiplegic, we adopted a symmetric master-slave motion assistant system in which the impaired hand is driven by the healthy hand on the opposite side. Furthermore, a VR environment displaying an enjoyable exercise was introduced. To verify the effectiveness of this system, a clinical trial was executed using one subject.