DEVELOPMENT OF ARDUINO-BASED HAND DYNAMOMETER ASSISTIVE DEVICE

• Published in: Journal of mechanics in medicine and biology Vol. 16; no. 3; p. 1650033
• Main Authors: NOH, NORAZMIRA MD, KADRI, NAHRIZUL ADIB, USMAN, JULIANA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company 01.05.2016; World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte., Ltd
• Subjects: All terrain vehicles; Communications systems; Control equipment; Data acquisition; Grip strength; Load cells; Microcontrollers; Rehabilitation; Strain gauges; Arduino; hand dynamometer; Rehabilitation
• ISSN: 0219-5194; 1793-6810
• DOI: 10.1142/S0219519416500330

The aim of this study is to develop a hand dynamometer that can act as a rehabilitation device by acquiring quantified data to enhance the power of hand grip strength. On the whole, patient that suffers from the hand injury is directly exposed to intricacy when performing daily task. Therefore, many hand aids have been developed to overcome the problem. A typical hand assistive device is able to measure the hand grip strength, which eventually increases its functionality. Like hand dynamometer, it is used for regular screening of hand grip strength and also for the preliminary and ongoing assessment of patients with hand dysfunction or trauma. Strain gauge-based system transducer acts as the measurement system together with Arduino microcontroller for the instrumentation, communication and controlling applications. The integration of strain gauges with a transducer is called a load cell which also made up the overall of force sensor to obtain readings from the hand grip movement. Microcontroller will further use this information to store and analyze data in the SD card. The percentage difference observed between hands across the sample of 25 subjects support the 10% rule. An overall 10.74% difference was found when combined dominant and non-dominant hand strength scores for all subjects were observed.