Design and Characterization of Low-Cost Soft Pneumatic Bending Actuator for Hand Rehabilitation

Assessment of Soft Actuators for Hand Exoskeletons: Pleated Textile Actuators and Fiber-Reinforced Silicone Actuators

“…Compared with the results presented above, FR-silicone actuators achieve the full bending motion around 213-250 kPa (Galloway et al, 2013), (Polygerinos et al, 2015b), (Ariyanto et al, 2018). These values confirm that the behavior of the constructed actuator coincides with the values determined in other studies.…”

“…A 16 cm FR actuator achieved maximum bending at 200 kPa ( Polygerinos et al, 2015b ), as did the silicone actuator in this study. Although not directly comparable, the actuator achieved half bending at 110 kPa in a study where silicone actuators were built for the construction of a hand exoskeleton, confirming that the maximum bending of these actuators is within the range of 200–250 kPa ( Ariyanto et al, 2018 ). Based on existing literature and the results presented in the current study, textile actuators require less air than FR-type silicone actuators to achieve full bending.…”

“…Finally, in 2018, silicone actuators achieved medium bending (close to 90° bending) at a pressure of 110 kPa. It was also shown that the actuator reduces this angle if attached to a finger simulating an exoskeleton ( Ariyanto et al, 2018 ). As seen in these studies, variation in actuator dimensions, the material of construction, and the type of reinforcement change the actuator’s behavior concerning the required input pressure that generates the maximum deflection.…”

Actuation Mechanisms and Applications for Soft Robots: A Comprehensive Review

“…In oral rehabilitation, a pneumatically driven robot can achieve an elongation rate of 800-1000% after driving, which is suitable for sensitive areas of the human body and assists in the treatment of patients with mandibular movement disorders [170]. In hand rehabilitation, a low-cost pneumatic hand rehabilitation robot helps fingers perform flexion/extension training with a maximum output force of 110 kPa [38]. In ankle-foot rehabilitation, a wearable robot driven by pneumatic artificial muscle actuators helps humans with orthopedic ankle and foot or assist walking [171].…”

“…By imitating the behaviours of various creatures in nature, such as reptiles, annelid, molluscs, and humans (bionic hands, arms, etc. ), different types of soft robots have been designed, like snake-shaped robots [27,28], inchworm robots [29,30], earthworm robots [31,32], jellyfish robots [33][34][35], robotic hands [36][37][38][39][40], auxiliary gloves [41][42][43], etc. Such a bionic soft robot can achieve a single function, such as multi-gait crawling [44][45][46][47], frictional crawling [48][49][50], jumping [51,52], and rolling [53,54], or it can achieve multiple functions, such as two modes of scrolling and crawling [55] and three modes of straight crawling, steering and rolling [56].…”