A Haptic Display for Robotic Rehabilitation of Stroke

The effects of stroke are debilitating on the American population. Past studies of robot-aided motor training for survivors have proven to be effective in upper limb motor recovery. However, survivors also suffer from loss or impairment of sensation. Sensory impairment is an important predictor for motor recovery of stroke survivors. Studies have suggested that sensory inputs during robot-aided motor training might be critical for the creation and promotion of cortical reconstruction due to brain plasticity during post-stroke recovery. This paper presents a new haptic display for the handle of the inMotion2 robot in order to enhance cutaneous sensory inputs for stroke survivors during hand motion. The sensory enhancement is realized through pins attached to servomotors mounted inside the robot handle that vibrate and contact the middle and index fingers, the palm, and the thumb during motor training. Each servomotor is independently controlled using a computer via parallel port with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) board as the hardware interface.