So how are your doctors and hospital ensuring that this further research is completed?
Design and Validation of a Self-aligning Index Finger Exoskeleton for Post-Stroke Rehabilitation
Abstract:
Rehabilitation
of hand functions is necessary to improve post-stroke patients’ quality
of life. There is initial evidence that hand exoskeletons should
exercise flexion/extension (f/e) and abduction/adduction (a/a) of the
fingers to rebuild hand functions. However, designing a self-alignment
mechanism of the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint to improve its wearing
comfort is still a challenge. In this paper, a novel index finger
exoskeleton with three motors is proposed to help post-stroke patients
perform finger a/a and f/e training. A spatial mechanism with passive
degrees of freedom for the MCP joint is designed to realize human-robot
axes self-alignment. The proposed mechanism’s kinematic compatibility is
analyzed to show its self-aligning capability, and the kineto-statics
analysis is performed to present the exoskeleton’s static
characteristics. Finally, kinematic and static experiments have been
conducted, and the results indicate that the standardized reaction
forces square sum of the exoskeleton to the MCP joint can be reduced by
65.8% compared with the state-of-the-art exoskeleton. According to the
experimental results, the exoskeleton can achieve the a/a and f/e
training and human-robot axes self-alignment, and improve its
comfortability. In the future, clinical trials will be further studied
to test the exoskeleton.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering ( Early Access )
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