Development of a Wearable Finger Exoskeleton for Rehabilitation

Abstract

This research work shows a new architecture of a novel wearable finger exoskeleton for rehabilitation; the proposed design consists of a one degree of freedom mechanism that generates the flexion and extension movement for the proximal, medial and distal phalange of the fingers to assist patients during the rehabilitation process, after neurological trauma, such as a stroke. The anatomy and anthropometric measures for the hand were used to define the design of the mechanism. In the analytic part, the representative equations for the forward and inverse kinematic analysis of the fingers are obtained, also a dynamic analysis is presented. The position and displacement continued for the structural analysis, were developed by following a static analysis, to know the deformation that the structure links show when an external load is applied in the mechanism. As result, a prototype was manufactured with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) using an additive manufacturing machine.

Mechanical Design and Analysis of the End-Effector Finger Rehabilitation Robot (EFRR) for Stroke Patients

“…There exists a larger number of degree of freedom (DoF) within a limited space for the hand, in addition, the internal structure of the synovial joints contains soft tissues, so the joints are not axially aligned in the traditional sense, and the length of the fingers varies greatly in different patients [37]. Although exoskeletons try to solve these problems by adding springs [38], optimizing the linkage structure [39][40][41], adding haptic assist modules [42], and adopting soft robot forms [43][44][45], it is still difficult to apply in clinical practice. When it comes to the structural design of the end-effector type, the complexity of the internal motions and articulations for the hand does not play such an important role, which means it is less sensitive to the hand equivalent model, and thus the model with a fixed axis can be adopted (see Figure 2), which naturally avoids the above problems, so there is still a possibility and necessity for innovation.…”

Wearable Triboelectric Sensors Enabled Gait Analysis and Waist Motion Capture for IoT‐Based Smart Healthcare Applications

“…Wearable or flexible electronics emerges as a rapidly developing research field in recent decades because of its intrinsical flexibility and lightness. [1,2] It offers a wide range of applications including motion monitoring, [3][4][5] rehabilitation, [6][7][8] human-machine interface (HMI), [9][10][11][12][13] disease diagnosis, [14][15][16] etc., to further improve the human's life quality. Among them, various wearable sensors are attached to the skin or worn on the body directly for sensory information collection with promising results distinguishing distinct body behaviors.…”

An Electric Self‐Sensing and Variable‐Stiffness Artificial Muscle

“…[ 34–37 ] For instance, a wearable robot can monitor a patient's activities [ 38,39 ] and provide resistance by applying different stiffnesses, which will help restore muscle function during rehabilitation training. [ 40,41 ]…”

“…[34][35][36][37] For instance, a wearable robot can monitor a patient's activities [38,39] and provide resistance by applying different stiffnesses, which will help restore muscle function during rehabilitation training. [40,41] The polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel electric actuation technology is an existing smart actuation technology. The working principle is that the electrostatic force produced by the high voltage on the anode attracts PVC gel into the mesh, causing the structure to become thinner, so as to achieve the driving effect.…”