Novel soft bending actuator-based power augmentation hand exoskeleton controlled by human intention

Abstract

This article presents the development of a soft material power augmentation wearable robot using novel bending soft artificial muscles. This soft exoskeleton was developed as a human hand power augmentation system for healthy or partially hand disabled individuals. The proposed prototype serves healthy manual workers by decreasing the muscular effort needed for grasping objects. Furthermore, it is a power augmentation wearable robot for partially hand disabled or post-stroke patients, supporting and augmenting the fingers' grasping force with minimum muscular effort in most everyday activities. This wearable robot can fit any adult hand size without the need for any mechanical system changes or calibration. Novel bending soft actuators are developed to actuate this power augmentation device. The performance of these actuators has been experimentally assessed. A geometrical kinematic analysis and mathematical output force model have been developed for the novel actuators. The performance of this mathematical model has been proven experimentally with promising results. The control system of this exoskeleton is created by hybridization between cascaded position and force closed-loop intelligent controllers. The cascaded position controller is designed for the bending actuators to follow the fingers in their bending movements. The force controller is developed to control the grasping force augmentation. The operation of the control system with the exoskeleton has been experimentally validated. EMG signals were monitored during the experiments to determine that the proposed exoskeleton system decreased the muscular efforts of the wearer.

Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

“…[ 20 ] Al‐Fahaam and colleagues modified a braided IPAM actuator by reinforcing one side through stitching in order to constrain expansion, leading to bending, [ 299 ] and used these actuators in an assistive glove for grasping. [ 300 ] Cappello and colleagues built upon this work and developed an actuator by stitching together an effectively inextensible plain weave fabric and a relatively uniaxially stretchable warp‐knitted raschel into a two sided pouch containing a bladder [ 6 ] (Figure 10k). Further iterations employed bonding with TPU films to remove the bladder to reduce hysteresis and speed up fabrication, [ 66 ] while Ge and colleagues employed rib knits as the second layer as opposed to a warp knit.…”

Wearable Robotic Glove Design Using Surface-Mounted Actuators

“…Additional fingertip sensors can enable our glove to bend by the user's intention. Therefore, the device's dimension will be much smaller than the previous efforts requiring fingertip sensors, such as Al-Fahaam et al ( 2018 ).…”

Design Criteria of Soft Exogloves for Hand Rehabilitation-Assistance Tasks

“…On the other hand, pneumatic actuators could be embedded into inflatable air bladders [16] and into a double layer sheet with curved rubber muscles [15] or made of flexible electrostatic discharge plastic sheet materials [1,56]. The McKibben muscles represent an affordable choice [57] and have the ability to constrain any radial expansion during pressurization [58]. Hydraulic actuators offer high load capacity [11].…”