In the year of 2020, a stroke occurred in Australia every 13 minutes on average, totaling 39,500 cases per year. The aftermath of a stroke commonly presents symptoms of impaired movement and coordination of an arm or hand. Of those afflicted, only 11.6% regain full function of their limbs. This area of stroke rehabilitation is an active area of research and evidence has shown that the use of robotically augmented physical therapy can boost recovery rates.
As part of the completion of my engineering degree, I completed a Capstone Thesis Project which aimed to address this area of need. The project encompassed the optimisation of two components and their integration into a complete system;
- THE POWER GLOVE: a semi-rigid motorised glove utilising high-accuracy actuators to control a hand by moving each finger along one degree of freedom.
- THE SENSOR GLOVE: a soft fabric sensorised glove utilising Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to track the pose of a hand.
These two components were combined to create a system that mirrors the movements of one hand onto the other. This action when combined with the use of visual illusions to trick the brain and dopaminergic drugs can take advantage of neuroplasticity and improve patient recovery.
At the conclusion of the project, I submitted a completed integrated system with the capabilities above. The power glove tracked the movements of the sensor glove to a high degree of accuracy and synchrony.
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