A Soft Pneumatic Robotic Glove for Hand Rehabilitation After Stroke

You'll have to ask your doctor  if they did any testing with patients that have spastic fingers.  I can't get any glove on my left hand even with multiple people helping.  Winters are hell, since even mittens assume that your hand is not balled in a fist. I usually ignore getting my thumb in the thumb slot. Never did any therapy for winter clothes, zipping jackets barely works.

A Soft Pneumatic Robotic Glove for Hand Rehabilitation After Stroke

Phuoc Thien Do; Dinh Thai Vo; Hoai Phuong Le

All Authors

---

Abstract

Document Sections

• I.
  Introduction
• II.
  Design
• III.
  Fabrication
• IV.
  Experiments
• V.
  Conclusion

Authors

Figures

References

Keywords

Abstract:

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a soft pneumatic finger and its application to rehabilitation equipment for assisting patients after a stroke. The soft actuator has multiple air chambers continuously next to each other was fabricated by the casting process. The material of the soft actuator is silicone platinum. For making a soft actuator, we designed the 3D model in CAD software and printed the prototypes with a 3D printing machine. The design of the robotic fingers is from the human finger's mechanism because it has a flexible movement in a small scope. We combined these fingers with a glove by mounting them on the glove, formed a rehabilitation device supporting the after-stroke patients. Because the soft pneumatic robotic glove weighs 140g, it makes it light, comfortable, safe, easy to operate, use, and accessible to all users. Additionally, we can control the force, bending angle, and response time by controlling the air pressure inside the fingers. The results showed that the glove could grasp and hold the objects with a small mass.

Published in: 2021 20th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR)

Date of Conference: 6-10 Dec. 2021

Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 05 January 2022

ISBN Information:

DOI: 10.1109/ICAR53236.2021.9659404

Publisher: IEEE

Conference Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Funding Agency:

I. Introduction

Hand is one of the principal parts of the human body to perform daily activities. Besides, some accidents or diseases could decrease the motor ability of hand function. Assistive devices for medical aims have been commonly used in the daily life activities of patients [1]. The suitable strategies for hand rehabilitation should be directed towards improving the issues for the losses of strength and dexterity. Dexterity is defined as the ability to coordinate muscle activity to adapt to environmental demands [2]. To restore hand function, physical therapy and rehabilitation programs which include repetitive task exercise, are necessary [3]. However, these tasks are normally labour-intensive and limited to clinical settings. As a replacement to the physiotherapist-assisted program, a lot of robotic devices having the ability to assist with repetitive hand movements have been chosen. Recently, there are a lot of researches on developing robotic rehabilitation systems for the hand that include multi -degree-of- freedom exoskeletons [4]; these were presented in [5], [6]. The assisted robot for rehabilitation with rigid links provides robust applications capable of high forces and executing challenging rehabilitation scenarios. The hard exoskeleton is one of the assistive and rehabilitation devices used widely by stroke patients or people having problems with their hands. This tool uses almost rigid links for the robot [1]. This device includes a back support platform, a four-finger module and a thumb module. The two modular parts can separately control the movement of the fingers and thumbs. The design has adjustability to fit various palm sizes of different users conveniently [7]. Besides, The PIY Glove is developed with Fused Deposition Modeling using 3D printing technology for lower fabrication charges and permit patients to 3D print rehabilitative and assistive equipment at home [8].

Sign in to Continue Reading

Authors