Novel Dexterity Kit Concept Based on a Review of Hand Dexterity Literature

Abstract

Dexterity is commonly defined by the quality of fine, voluntary movements used to manipulate objects during a specific task involving the movement of wrist, hands, arm, and fingers. Dexterity assessment kits are used to determine a person’s skilled task abilities through performance parameters such as speed, accuracy, and precision. This study proposes that one parameter that is as critical as the traditionally measured parameters is finger strength which could be measured as the amount of force or effort that a human hand exerts during object manipulation through fingers. In this paper, a detailed literature review was conducted of the traditional dexterity assessment methods and their kits used in the past. Thereafter, a novel dexterity kit has been proposed which incorporates measurement of finger strength data in addition to the traditional dexterity parameters during hand dexterity assessment. An experiment suggested that a significantly greater finger force is required for peg manipulation in the new test kit than in the traditional one.