Redesign of a minimally-supervised portable hand trainer for upper limb rehabilitation after stroke

Master thesis (2023)

Authors

E.N. van der Stoep Industrial Design Engineering

Contributors

R.H.M. Goossens Human-Centered Design (mentor)
L. Marchal Crespo Human-Robot Interaction - Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (mentor)
Faculty
Industrial Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering
Copyright: © 2023 Eline van der Stoep
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Published Date

28-07-2023

Language

English

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Faculty

Industrial Design Engineering

Abstract

People that are recovering from a stroke need frequent and high-intensity training to regain their upper-limb capacity. This will eventually result in better performances and higher quality of their daily life. Robotic devices are often used to assist stroke patients in rehabilitation. The minimally-supervised portable hand trainer, which is currently developed at the Motor Learning and Neurorehabilitation Lab of the TU Delft, specifically focuses on hand and forearm rehabilitation. Haptic feedback is used in a virtual game to train patients' finger flexion and extension and forearm pronosupination.
Prior to this master thesis, a feasibility and usability study has been performed with the second iteration of the hand trainer in collaboration with therapists from Rijndam and healthy participants, showing room for improvement.

In this graduation project, the portable hand trainer is redesigned to develop an improved product design in comparison to the second iteration. Following a human-centered design approach, a modified version of the double diamond method was created to achieve a redesign that enables more functional, ergonomic, and motivating rehabilitation training.

Analysis on strokes, on rehabilitation, on the state-of-the-art, through peer tests, and on the usability study, were performed to create a decision matrix to define a list of potential improvements, distinguishing high-priority, medium-priority and low-priority improvements.
The high-priority improvements have been thoroughly addressed in multiple cycles of ideation-, developing- and validating activities. The results are combined and transformed into a hardware-ready 3D prototype that demonstrates improvement in the pronosupination movement, the donning and doffing of the device and the wrist support. The prototype of the third iteration of the portable hand trainer is evaluated through interviews with experts in the field to reflect on the project goal and propose recommendations on future work.
The medium-priority improvements have been addressed in one cycle of ideation activities of which the results are presented in sketches to advice on further development.
The low-priority improvements have not been addressed in this project.