Wrist-Based Haptic Rehabilitation Device for Stroke using Body-Grounded Haptic Concept: A Review

Abstract

Stroke is a major cause of long-term disability, and impaired wrist and hand function can greatly limit independence in daily activities. Conventional rehabilitation remains important, but it is often constrained by therapist availability, limited training intensity, and reduced patient motivation during repetitive exercises. Haptic and robotic-assisted rehabilitation devices have been introduced to support repetitive, measurable, and feedback-driven therapy. However, many existing systems are bulky, costly, or designed mainly for clinical and laboratory settings, limiting their wider use in home-based or low-resource rehabilitation settings. This paper reviews selected wrist-based haptic and rehabilitation devices and proposes the development of a compact body-grounded haptic device, named H³-WristKit, for post-stroke wrist rehabilitation. The proposed device focuses on wrist flexion-extension movement and is designed to deliver adaptive assistive and resistive feedback using impedance control. Existing interfaces, including Hapkit, H³Kit, pneumatic wrist rehabilitation robots, low-cost wrist robots, and RiceWrist-S, were compared in terms of design, portability, advantages, and limitations. The review shows a clear gap between high-performance grounded systems and portable educational haptic devices. The proposed H³-WristKit aims to address this gap by combining a lightweight body-grounded structure, low-cost fabrication, and rehabilitation-oriented control. Future work should include prototype fabrication, control validation, safety testing, usability evaluation, and preliminary testing with post-stroke users to assess practical feasibility, patient adherence, and user satisfaction. This work provides an early design direction for a more accessible wrist rehabilitation device that may support continuous upper-limb therapy after stroke.