Development of robot hand for therapist education/training on rehabilitation

Students studying to become therapists have few opportunities for repeated training for the rehabilitation of contracture joints. This paper proposes the concept of a robot hand system for repeated rehabilitation training. A novel robot hand and artificial skin are developed in collaboration with doctors and therapists. Development of the robot hand is based on new design concepts aimed at imitating a human hand with a disability. The joint torque of a disabled person can be estimated by distributed tactile sensors. A model of contracture joints with tendon adhesion is introduced. The robot hand in imitation of contracture joints is governed by the force control based on torque control. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated experimentally.