Basic experiment on rehabilitation of upper-limb motor function using haptic-device system

Rehabilitation exercises must maintain a patient's interest and permit a quantitative evaluation of the rehabilitation. We have developed a haptic-device system. When users move a grip, the haptic device provides a virtual force that either assists the movement of their arm or working against it. To investigate the functional effect of this system in a rehabilitation program, we used for five subjects with motor-function disorders and measured the grip position, velocity, force exerted on the grip, and EMG activities during a reaching task of one subject. The accuracy of the grip position, velocity and trajectories patterns were similar for all the subjects. The results suggested that the EMG activities were improved by applying the virtual force to the grip. These results can be used for the development of rehabilitation programs and evaluation methods.