Development of a hand exoskeleton system for index finger rehabilitation

摘要: In order to overcome the drawbacks of traditional rehabilitation method, robot-aided has been widely investigated for recent years. And hand robot, as one hot research fields, remains many challenging issues be investigated. This paper presents a new exoskeleton system with some novel characteristics. Firstly, both active and passive rehabilitative motions are realized. Secondly, device is elaborately designed brings advantages in aspects. For example, joint motion accomplished by parallelogram mechanism high level control therefore made very simple without need complicated kinematics. The adjustable limit design ensures that actual angles don’t exceed range (ROM) thus patient safety guaranteed. can fit different patients ROM well dynamically changing individual patient. also accommodate extent variety sizes. Thirdly, proposed strategy simultaneously realizes position force motor driver which only works mode. Meanwhile, resistance compensation preliminary realized resisting effectively reduced. Some experiments were conducted verify system. Experimentally collected data show achieved close healthy phalange length (ROPL) covers size typical hand, satisfying regular rehabilitation. evaluate performance when it haptic mode, equivalent moment inertia (MOI) was calculated. results prove low critical obtain good backdrivability. mode virtual interactive successfully feedback finger reduced one-third; desired trajectory satisfactorily.