A LabVIEW-based human-computer interaction system for the exoskeleton hand rehabilitation robot

Exoskeleton upper limb rehabilitation robots are more and more applied to help hemiplegic patients to implement rehabilitation training, which makes up the shortage of rehabilitation only depend on doctors. Aiming at the training of patients' hand exercise, in this paper a kind of human-computer interaction of exoskeleton hand rehabilitation robots based on LabVIEW system was proposed, which was mainly composed of exoskeleton fingers robot part, data acquisition system, serial assistant receiver, and the virtual hand. When the patients wore the exoskeleton hand rehabilitation robots, and once his (her) fingers moved, the shape of bend sensors glued the robots would change. The changed electrical signals were shifted by A/D conversion system and delivered to the serial assistant port, impelling the hand in virtual environment to move synchronously. This course was human-computer interaction. In this paper, the PTC Creo (Parametric Technology Corporation) software was used to design a model of exoskeleton hand rehabilitation robot, and then single chip microcomputer and A/D converter were carried out to accomplish data acquisition. While the virtual environment was built with LabVIEW software, which could call the fingers model and program a serial assistant. This system could swiftly deliver the data to the virtual fingers and then implement synchronized movement between hand robot and virtual hand.