Forces Calculation Module for the Leap-Based Virtual Glove

Hand rehabilitation is fundamental after stroke or surgery. Traditional rehabilitation implies high costs, stress for the patient, and subjective evaluation of the therapy effectiveness. Mechanical devices based approaches are often expensive, cumbersome and patient specific, while tracking-based devices are not affected by these limitations, though they could suffer from occlusions. In recent works, the procedure used for implementing a multi-sensors approach, the Virtual Glove (VG), based on the simultaneous use of two orthogonal LEAP motion controllers, was described. In this paper, an engineered version of VG was calibrated and measurements were performed. This article presents a model extension to be used for the off-line calculation of the hand kinematics and of the flexion/extension forces exerted by each finger when constrained by calibrated elastic tools.