Development of a novel functional electrical stimulation system for hand rehabilitation using feedback control

Worldwide stroke is a leading cause for disability and the demand for rehabilitation devices and everyday life assistance is still high. To address this demand, we consider a combination of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) of the forearm muscles and Iterative Learning Control (ILC) for hand rehabilitation. We implement an ILC scheme to control the extension and flexion of the paretic fingers via two FES channels and propose a piecewise linear parametrization of the domain of admissible stimulation intensities.