Feasibility Study of a Hand Exoskeleton for Rehabilitation of Post-Stroke Patients

This paper illustrates the activity done by the authors for the development of a hand exoskeleton with two degrees of freedom addressed to the rehabilitation of post-stroke patients. The literature is investigated and many design issues are deeply discussed with the purpose to provide a reader who is approaching this problem with useful guidelines. The feasibility study of a one degree of freedom mechanism for one finger, intended as the basic module of the targeted hand exoskeleton, is outlined: two kinematic chains having six and eight links respectively are presented and discussed.