Finger Strength Assessment Device for Thai Traditional Massage Training

doi: 10.14456/mijet.2023.3

Abstract

Finger strength is essential in Thai traditional therapeutic massage. One of the most well-known finger strength exercises is called Yok Kradan training with cross-legged sitting. It is a requirement for students in the Applied Thai Traditional Medicine (ATTM) program to practice their finger power. During traditional Yok Kradan testing, four instructors evaluate the student's performance by the amount of time (using a stopwatch) that students can lift their body up. Consequently, the start time and stop time are not synchronized and the inspectors are hard to observe the student’s body touching the floor. This research aims to design the finger strength assessment device in order to improve accuracy of body-lifting time measurement and standardize assessment. It consists of plywood with length, width and thickness of 120, 100, and 16 centimeters, respectively. Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) sensor are installed at 5 positions on the plywood to detect the practitioner’s knees, thighs and buttocks touching the floor. The FSR sensors are also attached on the gloves. The raspberry pi single board computer are used to read the values from all sensors in order to check whether any parts of the body is touching the floor or not. The experimental results show that the accuracy of 15 FSR sensors compared to standard weights ranged from 98.21% to 98.8%. Such error values can be tolerated in assessing finger strength by Yok Kradan training. Then, we evaluated our proposed device compared with traditional assessment. The result showed that our device helped in making the assessment more reliable and less disputable since the assessment results were promptly shown on the screen after the test.