Virtual therapist: A Phantom robot-based haptic system for personalized post-surgery finger rehabilitation

Finger rehabilitation is crucial to a patient´s full recovery following finger surgery. In order to avoid contact-induced infection while simultaneously improving patient motivation and reducing barriers to therapist customization of the rehabilitation system, we design the Virtual Therapist: a Phantom robot-based haptic system with a user-friendly software interface. An anatomically correct finger model is derived and implemented for calculating the four joint angles of a patient´s index finger so that only the fingertip needs to be coupled with the Phantom robot for data collection purposes. A demonstration-based user interface allows the therapist to personalize a rehabilitation plan for the patient. We qualitatively validate the efficacy of our proof-of-concept system through observing the performance of three human adults. In less than eight minutes, all three subjects could correctly and proficiently use the system in the role of either patient or therapist.