132 Int. J. Mechatronics and Automation, Vol. 3, No.

2, 2013

Magnetic resonance compatible hand rehabilitation

robot

Zhenjin Tang*
Department of Modern Mechanical Engineering,
School of Creative Science and Technology,
Waseda University,
Tokyo 162-0042, Japan
E-mail: tangzhenjin@sugano.mech.waseda.ac.jp
*Corresponding author

Shigeki Sugano
Department of Modern Mechanical Engineering,
School of Creative Science and Technology,
Waseda University,
Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: sugano@waseda.jp

Hiroyasu Iwata
Department of Modern Mechanical Engineering,
School of Creative Science and Technology,
Waseda University,
Tokyo 162-0042, Japan
E-mail: jubi@waseda.jp

Abstract: This paper presents the design, fabrication and evaluation of a magnetic resonance
compatible finger rehabilitation robot, which can not only be used as a finger rehabilitation
training tool after stroke, but also to study the brain’s recovery process during the rehabilitation
therapy (ReT). The mechanics of this robot are designed to be adjustable to different persons’
finger phalanges, and also the gap between one finger to another can be easily changed. By using
an ultrasonic motor as its actuator, it has been designed to be portable, with a high torque output.
In addition, this robot also has been designed to overcome the intrinsic shortage of non-back
drivability in ultrasonic motor, i.e., it can be used for both passive and active motion. The
resulting system enables the patient to do extension and flexion rehabilitation exercises in two
degrees of freedom (DOF) for each finger as well as one DOF motion on the thumb. Finally,
experiments have been carried out to evaluate the performance of this robot.

Keywords: MRI compatible; hand rehabilitation; robot; stroke.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Tang, Z., Sugano, S. and Iwata, H. (2013)
‘Magnetic resonance compatible hand rehabilitation robot’, Int. J. Mechatronics and Automation,
Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.132–140.

Biographical notes: Zhenjin Tang is currently a PhD student in Department of Modern

Mechanical Engineering, School of Creative Science and Technology, Waseda University. He
received his Bachelors degree and Master degree in 2007 and 2010 respectively, in Mechanical
Engineering. His current research interests include rehabilitation robotics and intelligent robotics.

Shigeki Sugano received his BS, MS, and Doctor of Engineering degrees in Mechanical
Engineering in 1981, 1983, and 1989 from Waseda University. From 1987 to 1991, he was a
research associate at Waseda University. Since 1991, he has been a faculty member in the
Department of Mechanical Engineering at Waseda, where he is currently a Professor. His
research interests include human-symbiotic anthropomorphic robot design, dexterous and safe
manipulator design, and human-robot communication. He received the Technical Innovation
Award from the Robotics Society Japan for the development of the Waseda Piano-Playing Robot:
WABOT-2 in 1991. He received the JSME Medal for Outstanding Paper from the Japan Society
of Mechanical Engineers in 2000, the JSME Fellow Award in 2006, and the IEEE Fellow Award
in 2007. He also received IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award in 2008, the RSJ Fellow
Award in 2008, and the SICE Fellow Award in 2011.

Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 Magnetic resonance compatible hand rehabilitation robot 133

Hiroyasu Iwata received his BS, MS, and Doctor of Engineering degrees in Mechanical
Engineering in 1997, 1999, and 2003, respectively, from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. He
was a research associate and an Assistant Professor at Waseda University in 2001 and 2004,
respectively. Since 2005, he has been an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Biomedical
Engineering, Consolidated Research Institute for Advanced Science and Medical Care, Waseda
University. He is also a member of the Humanoid Robotics Institute and the WABOT-2 HOUSE
Laboratory of Waseda University.

1 Introduction In Gassert et al. (2003) an MRI compatible

haptic interface was introduced, which was powered by a
After stroke, most survivors have impaired motor function.
master-slave actuator. It used a conventional actuator placed
Rehabilitation robotics are usually employed to provide
outside the scanner room and a hydraulic connection to
highly repetitive, task specific movement without high cost
transmit the force and motion to a magnetically inert slaver
and labour burden occurred in conventional one on
placed close to or inside the MRI scanner. The experimental
one therapy (Godfrey et al., 2010; Hermano et al., 2009).
results showed that the system was able to perform
However, during traditional robotic therapies, there are little
movements with high accuracy and with forces up to several
specific information acquired about the brain activity that
thousand Newton. The master-slave actuator driving
are associate with the improvement of motor function.
strategy is a possibility for MIRCR but these kind of
Therefore, it is confront with big technically challenge to
systems lack portability, which is an important factor for
objective evaluate the specific effects of rehabilitation
ReT robots used in confined space of MRI machine.
therapy (ReT) (Johansen-Berg et al., 2002).
An fMRI pilot study was carried out to evaluate
With the technology developing, the appear of
brain activation associated with locomotion adaptation
functional magnetic resonance imagine (fMRI) offers an
(Marchal-Crespo et al., 2011). In this research, a robotic
objective approach to specially identify changes in brain
system was able to perform a number of predefined gait
activity during or after ReT. Thus, combining robotics
movements and was actuated by two hydraulic cylinders.
technology and fMRI to implement ReT has been seen as a
Because a hydraulic system needs a liquid compressor and
critical method in new rehabilitation research (Burdet et al.,
pressure control valves, it is once again hard to make such a
2001; Gassert et al., 2003; Shadmehr and Holcomb, 1997).
system portable. Another option for the design of MRICR is
Meanwhile, studying the specified reorganisation area of
pneumatic actuator. However, they have two problems. The
brain during therapy could help researchers to understand
first one is that the power source is compressed air, which is
how the motor processes are relearned, which might gain
hard to control accurately. The other problem is again the
significant insight into stroke recovery therapy.
big size, since it also needs an external pump and valves.
Furthermore, during ReT process, motivation has been
A one DOF, MR compatible hand rehabilitation device
seen as an important factor and frequently used as a
was introduced in the literature (Khanicheh et al., 2005).
determinant of rehabilitation outcome (Roberto et al., 2007).
This device was developed for fMRI studies of the brain and
Though, there does not exist any consensus on what
motor performance during rehabilitation after stroke. The
kind of training strategies are more motivating than others,
key feature of this device is the use of electro rheological
using the fMRI to study the particular brain regions
fluids (ERF) as the power generating source, as a
involved in rehabilitation learning under different training
replacement for traditional actuators. The ERF is a fluid
strategies might help physiotherapist to tailor out optimised,
which rheological property dramatic changes when exposed
motivating training menu for their patients.
to an electric field. Thus, it can generate controllable
In view of above advantages on combining robotics with
resistive torques corresponding to different electric voltages.
fMRI, it is very necessary for rehabilitation robot researcher
The author also verified the MRI compatibility of the ERF.
to design out a robot that could not only be used as a ReT
Due to the use of this power source, the system was
tool in daily living, but importantly could be also used in an
portable. However, only the closure of the hand could be
MRI machine as a clinical tool for studying the stroke
trained with this system.
recovery process as well as the effectiveness of ReT.
In our research, we intended to adopt ultrasonic motor as
For the strong static magnetic field in an MRI machine,
our actuator, which can output high torques with a relative
the conventional actuators and mechatronics components
small size, to achieve our portable requirement.
are not capable to be used inside. The device exposes in it
Since the complex construction of human’s hand,
should meet with two significant factors (Elizabeth, 2003;
solving the actuator problem does not means it is easy to
Khanicheh et al., 2005). Firstly, all the components
develop out a portable hand rehabilitation device. There are
should be zero inherent magnetisation; additionally, they
more than twenty DOF on each hand, so if the goal is to
should have negligible effect on the quality of the image.
develop a hand rehabilitation robot that can control each
Therefore, developing an MRI compatible robot (MRICR)
joint independently, the number of necessary actuators will
has becoming a tough teaser for rehabilitation robot
result in a large volume even using the relative small size
developer.
ultrasonic motor. Literature (Tong et al., 2010) describes a
134 Z. Tang et al.
hand function training robot. It detects the intention
(opening or closing) from the stroke person, using the
electromyography (EMG) signals measured from the
hemiplegic side of the arm. Each hand has five individual
finger assemblies capable to drive 2 DOF of each finger at
the same time, powered by one linear actuator. This design
shows that one actuator can be used effectively in
rehabilitation tasks to drive two DOF of one finger. This
design choice is also justified by the fact that in humans
the distal inter-phalange (DIP) joint and proximal
inter-phalange (PIP) joint are coupled. Therefore, this shows
us a possible way how to reduce the size of hand
exoskeletons. Nevertheless, this robot described has two
limitations. The first is that the exoskeleton’s joint centres
are irrespective of the corresponding joint angle. Instead it
would be beneficial if the joint centre of the exoskeleton
adapts to the joint angle of the human hand. The other
disadvantage is that they cannot adjust for a wide range
length of different human fingers. These problems also exist
in the robot described in Worsnopp et al. (2007).
As a conclusion, it can be said that most hand ReT
robots are not only have limitations as normal ReT tools,
but they also could not use to objective evaluate the brain
activities associate with the improvement of motor function.
Therefore, we developed out an MRI compatible hand
rehabilitation robot that can satisfy both the functions, see
Figure 1.
This paper is arranged as follows: Section 2 describes
the design requirements and hand parameters. Section 3
details the mechanical construction and Section 4 introduces
the control unit. Section 5 evaluates the performance.
Conclusions and future works are addressed in Section 6.
Figure 1 Prototype of MRI compatible hand rehabilitation robot
(see online version for colours)
2 Design requirements and hand parameters
As discussed before, existing systems do not satisfy the
specific requirements of ReT. Our goals for developing the
new device are as follows:
• MRI compatibility.
• Portability.
• Adjustable to a variety of hand sizes. Both fitting to
various lengths of phalanges and different gaps between
fingers.
• Avoiding interference between the hand exoskeleton
and the finger.
• Two DOF motion per finger (MCP and PIP) and one
DOF motion in thumb.
• User safety.
2.1 Hand parameters
Designing a proper hand exoskeleton, first we should have a
good knowledge on the different parameters of the human
hand. They include: the number of joints for each finger; the
DOF of each joint; the average length of each knuckle; and
the perpendicular force needed to do exercises for each
joint.
Figure 2 shows the schematic structure of the
human hand. Each finger has three joints and four
DOF. The metacarpal phalange (MCP) of each finger and
carpometacarpal (CM) of the thumb has two DOF. To
determine the values for each of the parameters given
above, we carried out a literature survey. Literature
(Fu et al., 2007) presents data for the lengths of finger
knuckles, drive force for flexion/extension, and also the
range of motion (ROM) of the index finger, which was
measured from sixty persons at different age groups. To
ensure these data’s reliability, we also carried out our own
survey measuring ten people (Tang et al., 2011). We used
the measure gauge to get the knuckle length for each finger,
and used pull-push gauge (Figure 3) to measure the joint
driving force (measured from the middle of the knuckle).
For those data that are different from our measure with the
literature, we adopt the average values as our result. Finally,
we preliminary decide the knuckle length of each finger
presents in Table 1, as well as the ROM and torque in
Table 2.
Figure 2 Hand structure
 Magnetic resonance compatible hand rehabilitation robot 135

Figure 3 Measure joint force (see online version for colours) (Gear2 FP) through a rubber belt. The second part of Gear2
(Gear2 SP) rotates around a common axis with Gear2 FP.
Gear2 SP meshes with the Mid-gear. The Mid-gear transfers
the power to the Gear3 that is fixed together with Lever1.
The application force exerted on Lever2 from Lever1 drives
Lever3, resulting in the movement of the MCP joint with
the proximal attachment. Meanwhile, a sheath which is
attached to one of the holes in Lever2 is sliding in Slot2.
Once this sheath reaches the end point in Slot2, Lever3
commences to rotate around the supporting point connected
with the proximal attachment. Thus, the applied force is
transferred to the intermediate attachment through Lever4,
which causes the movement of the PIP joint.

Figure 4 Schematic of finger driving principle

Table 1 Each knuck length of per finger

Length
Proximal Intermediate Distal
Finger
Thumb (mm) 33 / 30
Index (mm) 43 25 24
Middle (mm) 50 29 26
Ring (mm) 43 28 25
Little (mm) 34 20 23

Table 2 ROM and max torque of per finger

Torque
MCP PIP/IP
ROM
Finger (deg/Nm) 0–87/0.3 0–100/0.16
Thumb (deg/Nm) 0–60/0.3 0–80/0.13
3 Mechanical construction
The finger drive system consists of five parts:
proximal/intermediate attachment, six levers, four gears,
belt transmission and actuator. The actuator for each finger
is an ultrasonic motor (SHINSEI USR30E3N) with a size of
35 mm × 36 mm × 40 mm, including a build-in encoder. It
has a high power-to-weight ratio, high precision in
positioning, speed controllability, silent motion and is made
by absolutely no magnetic materials. The maximum torque
is 0.1 Nm, maximum speed is 250 rpm, and the driving
frequency is 50 KHz. In this device the actuator is located
away from the hand exoskeleton in a box under the palm,
driving the extension or flexion motion for the MCP and
PIP joint simultaneously. Most of the mechanical
components are made by ABS plastic materials through
three dimension printer technology.
Two attachments are fastened on the phalanges of the
proximal and intermediate part of the finger, respectively
(see Figure 4). The exoskeleton produces a combined MCP
and PIP extension/flexion movement with the help of levers.
First, the power is transferred from Gear1, which is fixed at
the actuator’s power output shaft, to the first part of Gear2
Notes: 1 – motor, 2 – Gear1, 3 – belt, 4 – handle,
5 – Gear2 FP, 6 – Gear2 SP, 7 – mid-gear,
8 – Gear3, 9 – slide, 10 – Safty holes,
11 – Lever1, 12 – Slot1, 13 – Lever5,
14 – Slot2, 15 – Lever2, 16 – Lever3,
17 – Lever4, 18 – intermediate attachment,
19 – proximal attachment, 20 – guide rail,
21 – resistive sensor.
3.1 Thumb driving principle
Considering the complex bone structure and the difficult
attachment to the distal phalange, we decided to implement
thumb rehabilitation in one DOF. Again, an ultrasonic
motor is used. It is located at the bottom part of the box with
the other mechanical components for the thumb actuation,
see Figure 5. Compared to the finger part, the driving
principle of the thumb is more straightforward. The
extension and flexion motion results from the combination
of Lever8, Lever9 and one and Lever8 are fixed together
during the exercises. The power transfers from the actuator
to the first part of Gear4 (Gear4 FP) through a belt. The
second part of Gear4 (Gear4 SP) rotates around a common
axis with Gear4 FP. Gear4 SP meshes with Gear5, thereby
transferring the power to the levers. As a result, the levers
drive the thumb to do an extension or flexion motion in the
plane vertical to the palm.
136 Z. Tang et al.

Figure 5 Schematic of thumb driving principle small size and long distance power transfer capability of the
rubber belt properly solve this problem. In our device, we
use one MITSUBOSHI belt between two custom designed
gears (Gear2 FP and Gear1, Gear4 FP and Gear1) to transfer
the power output from the motor. Therefore, the whole
power providing system designed into portable with a size
of 22 cm × 12 cm × 11 cm. The advantages of belt
transmission also include: flexibility, wide application
ranges with higher power transmission capacity, longer
service life and lower noise level. Table 4 presents the
name, tooth, circumference and width of these belts.

Table 4 Name, tooth, circumference and width of the belt

Belt name Tooth Circumference (mm) Width (mm)

S2M206 103 206 4
S2M206 103 206 4
S2M220 110 220 4
S2M232 116 232 4
S2M150 75 150 4

3.3 Two working modes

In ReT, the active mode is the one in which subjects move
their impaired body parts themselves inside robots to
implement rehabilitation training. On the opposite side, the
passive mode is the one in which the robot forces the
impaired parts of body to move. Literature (Weiller et al.,
3.2 Belts and gears 1996) studied the brain representation of active and passive
flexion/extension movement on the elbow with six healthy
Although, ultrasonic motor is a high torque output motor,
volunteers. During passive movement, the subject’s right
the maximum torque of USR30E3N is 0.1 Nm, which is
arm was drove by a torque motor inside a guide hinge,
sufficient to the finger torque requirement of 0.3 Nm.
while, the active movement is the subjects active to move
Therefore, in order to ensure our device could provide
their elbow joints with the same amplitude and frequency as
enough torque to implement extension and flexion
in passive mode. The same frequency is ensured to pace by
rehabilitation, we have to properly design our speed
a metronome. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was
reduction gears. In reference on the data in Tables 1 and 2,
measured under these two training conditions. The results
finally, we designed out all the speed reduction gears listed
present that the rCBF in the contra-lateral sensori-motor
on Table 3.
cortex were strong increased both in the active and passive
movements. In addition, they were identical in location,
Table 3 Gears’ tooth and modulus
amount and extent. However, in the supplementary motor
Gear name Tooth Modulus area, the rCBF was stronger in active condition than passive
Gear1 14 / condition. That is to say, active mode plays a role as
important as, or sometimes more important than passive
Gear2 FP 60 /
mode on ReT. Furthermore, active motion is original from
Gear2 SP 16 1.5 the motivation of the subject themselves, so it is reasonable
Mid-gear 14 1.5 to be expected more than passive motion during therapy
Gear3 32 1.5 process. Therefore, it is very necessary to develop both the
Gear4 FP 60 / active and passive modes for rehabilitation device.
However, developing an active mode in a device driven
Gear4 SP 8 1.5
by an ultrasonic motor would be difficult because its
Gear5 24 1.5 inherent shortage of non-back drivability. In our research,
Note: ‘/’ means corresponding to MITSUBOSHI belt. we overcome this disadvantage by improving the
mechanical design. One gear which can work in two modes,
To develop a portable hand exoskeleton, the belt mesh or non-mesh was designed out to solve this problem.
transmission plays an important role in our device. In the The mesh or non-mesh state of this gear is controlled by a
narrow space of the box, the power of the motors cannot be handle which inserts into the slot of the Gear2 SP. The
transferred to the levers’ gears directly, while the relative Gear2 FP and Gear2 SP will separate when the handle is
 Magnetic resonance compatible hand rehabilitation robot 137

pushed in the opposite direction, and in this way the power power for all hardware. Another method is the reset button
from the motor is not passed to the levers. Thus, the hand locating on the hardware control panel.
inside the exoskeleton could move freely, namely in active
mode. On the contrary, when the handle is pulled in the Figure 7 Three dimensions drawing of the hand exoskeleton
same direction with Gear2 FP, the two gears mesh, causing (see online version for colours)
the power output form motor forcing the finger to do
rehabilitation, namely, passive mode (see Figure 6). During
the passive mode, the build-in optical encoder can be used
to feedback control the motor. Meanwhile, in active mode,
one resistive sensor (Figure 4, 21) is used to monitor the
patient’s motion.

Figure 6 Two working state of Gear2, (a) mesh state and (b)
non-mesh state (see online version for colours)

Figure 8 (a) Hardware of control unit (b) Schematic of control

unit (see online version for colours)

(a) (b)

3.4 Assemble system

Figure 7 shows a CAD drawing of the whole system for the
hand exoskeleton. Initial design studies showed that five
actuators and corresponding components could be well
placed in limited space. To adjust for variations in phalanx
length, the attached position on Lever3 could be easily
modified for Lever4, but the length of Lever4 also need be
changed. A collection of length for Lever4 in different size
would be efficient for this work. Nevertheless, in very few
cases the attachment position on Lever3 may need to be
changed for Lever2. Particularly, for different gaps between (a)
fingers, we can also overcome it by sliding the place of the
slide which lays on a guide rail, the range for modify is 15
mm. In addition, through changing the attach point on
Lever7 for Lever8, this device could also be adjusted to
different height of Thumb to the surface of the box arouse
by different thickness of human’s hand.

3.5 Safety measures

For human rehabilitation use, safety needs to have a high
priority. In our device the safety measures is mainly done by
the mechanical design, which is one of the most reliable
method. In Gear3 distributes several holes, so that the
motion range can be adapted to different phalange lengths (b)
and desired ROM of joints. Before using the hand
exoskeleton, we insert two sheaths in two of these holes to
limit the maximum ROM of Gear3. Once the device out of 4 Control unit
control, the Gear3 would be stopped when one of the sheath
The control unit for this device is depicted in Figure 8. The
contact with two sides of the slide. Other measures include:
main controller is a high performance AVR-8 bit real-time
emergency power kill button, which could turn off the
microcontroller. It has an advanced RISC architecture. Most
of the instructions are executed within a single clock cycle.
138 Z. Tang et al.

Therefore, combined with a 16 MHz working frequency, it Table 5 Links’ parameter

can be full competent in finishing our task such as: sensor
li (mm) li (mm)
signal collection and control command output.
The control unit allows controlling the maximum 0 48 7 16.5
desired angle for the MCP joint, the movement frequency 1 108 8 25
and the number of repetitions. In the host computer, we used 2 39 9 21
the AVR Studio to programme the software for the 3 90 10 29
controller. After programming, the user input the desired
4 27.5 11 9
angle for MCP joint, velocity and number of times for ReT,
after compiling, downloading the .hex file to the flash 5 47.5 12 22
memory through JTAG module. The controller execute the 6 50
programme, sending control command to motor driver
module which drives the ultrasonic motor working, at the Figure 9 (a) Schematic of the hand exoskeleton and the finger
same time, the T/C0 interrupt programme collects position (b) The angle change on the actuator, the MCP joint
signal feedback from motor with a cycle time of 1ms. Since and the PIP joint over time (see online version
the motor speed is controlled by analogue signal with a 3.3v for colours)
reference voltage, so we used a DAC chip (ad5300) to
convert digital value in to analogue signal. This 8-bit
buffered voltage output DAC uses a versatile 3-wire serial
interface that operates at clock rates up to 30 MHz, and the
data communication with micro-controller was based on a
SPI bus.

5 Performance evaluation
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the mechanical
structure and to ensure that there is no interference between
the dorsal part of the finger phalange and the mechanical
components, two experiments were carried out.
In the first experiment the change of the actuator,
the MCP joint and the PIP joint angle over time was
evaluated. For this purpose, a simulation based on the CAD
model was used. The length of the different segments of the
exoskeleton and the simulated finger can be found in
Table 5. Each joint angle was considered as zero when the
hand was fully extended, and the movement in the (a)
anticlockwise direction corresponded to positive values. The
intersection angle between l0 and l1 was regarded as the
actuation angle. The motor speed was set to 82.3 rpm
(the maximum speed of the ultrasonic motor USR30E3N is
250 rpm). After speed reductive transmission on gears, the
angle velocity on l1 is nearly 0.08 rps, resulting in the device
does extension and flexion motion with a cycle time of 5 s.
Finally, we obtain the graphics on angle change of the
actuator, the MCP joint and PIP joint over half circle time,
presenting on Figure 9(b). The graphic shows the initial
angle value on the actuator is about 43°. The maximum
angle on the MCP joint is about 90°, the maximum angle on
the PIP joint is 112°. Compared with the data in Table 2, the
maximum angle on PIP seems 12° larger, it may be caused
by the different attach point of the Intermediate attachment
or the Proximal attachment, and also may be caused by
inappropriate combination of links’ length. In conclusion,
the 3D model proves that our device could provide a full
ROM both on the MCP joint and the PIP joint. Besides, this
graphic also presents us clearly on the corresponding angle
relation between the actuator with the MCP joint and the
PIP joint. (b)
 Magnetic resonance compatible hand rehabilitation robot
Figure 10 (a) A human wearing our hand exoskeleton with his
index finger to do passive rehabilitation (b) The angle
trajectory of the MCP joint and the PIP joint in three
times extension and flexion exercises (see online
version for colours)
(a)
(b)
In our second experiment, a healthy person wearing a 5DT
Data Glove 14 Ultra (from fifth dimension technologies)
was performing passive extension and flexion movements in
our device: the exoskeleton moved the finger three times in
12 seconds [Figure 10(a)], which is ensured by a pendulum
with the same frequency. The glove measures the joint
angles closer to the human joints and therefore provides
more direct measurements of the human joint angles
respective to the angles calculated from the posture of the
exoskeleton. In this way, the measurements are less
dependent on the different lengths of the human finger
phalanges. Figure 10(a) shows us the whole rehabilitation
process from full extended (1) to full flexion (4) in one
index finger. Figure 10(b) presents the angle trajectory
record from the data glove of the MCP and PIP joints. The
results show that our hand exoskeleton is capable to provide
enough torque to help this person to do a passive extension
and flexion rehabilitation exercise. Simultaneously, it
indicates that this device is able to offer a full ROM on both
139
the MCP and the PIP joint without any mechanical
interference between the finger dorsal and components.
6 Conclusions and future works
This paper presents a novel hand exoskeleton that was
developed under consideration of the special requirements
for clinical studies. This device has overcome several
shortages of some of the previous research. Most
importantly, the device can be used with MRI and can
therefore be used to analyse the rehabilitation recovery
process. This might show new ways for rehabilitation
treatment in the future. The current work is a basis for future
research work. The next step works will include integrate
force sensor and position sensor (which uses in active
mode) into this device. Afterwards, we will verify the MRI
compatibility of this device in an MRI machine, followed by
clinical tests with patients. Finally, using patient studies we
hope to gain insights into the brain reorganisation process
during stroke recovery, leading to better ReT procedures.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by Funding Programme for
Next Generation World-Leading Researchers, and Global
Center of Essence (GCOE) Programme Global Robot
Academia from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology of Japan, and also the Chinese
Scholarship Council (CSC).
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper
entitled ‘Design of an MRI compatible robot for finger
rehabilitation’ presented at IEEE ICMA 2012 Conference,
Chengdu, August 5–8, 2012.
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