General details:
For UC Berkeley's hackathon, our team realized there was a major gap in physical function after patients suffer a stroke. Even after going through a stroke, there is often nerve damage in the hand which completely takes away physical function.
So we came up with a way to aid patients after this trauma:
- Developed a glove using arduinos that assists in rehabilitation of the hand after nerve damage
- Automates hand exercises based on the nerve damage and user strength
- Measures each finger's individual strength as well as total strength to target specific muscles and showcase growth over time
Check out a video of our first (very basic) prototype: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VI_90eHESPU
How we built it:
- Created a glove with a motor and pully system, powered by Arduinos, that could automate hand exercises
- Implemented graphviz using Java for finger-specific data visualization, developed a weight-based backtracking algorithm for targeting weaker muscles by analyzing each finger’s individual strength, as well as the Android Canvas API for user interface development
- Integrated all development to create an android app that displays the data, allows users to see progress, and lets users pick their exercises