hand exoskeleton
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Mechatronics ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 102695
Author(s):  
Ehsan Amirpour ◽  
Rasul Fesharakifard ◽  
Hamed Ghafarirad ◽  
Seyed Mehdi Rezaei ◽  
Alireza Saboukhi ◽  
...  

Machines ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Daniele Esposito ◽  
Jessica Centracchio ◽  
Emilio Andreozzi ◽  
Sergio Savino ◽  
Gaetano D. Gargiulo ◽  
...  

Voluntary hand movements are usually impaired after a cerebral stroke, affecting millions of people per year worldwide. Recently, the use of hand exoskeletons for assistance and motor rehabilitation has become increasingly widespread. This study presents a novel hand exoskeleton, designed to be low cost, wearable, easily adaptable and suitable for home use. Most of the components of the exoskeleton are 3D printed, allowing for easy replication, customization and maintenance at a low cost. A strongly underactuated mechanical system allows one to synergically move the four fingers by means of a single actuator through a rigid transmission, while the thumb is kept in an adduction or abduction position. The exoskeleton’s ability to extend a typical hypertonic paretic hand of stroke patients was firstly tested using the SimScape Multibody simulation environment; this helped in the choice of a proper electric actuator. Force-myography was used instead of the standard electromyography to voluntarily control the exoskeleton with more simplicity. The user can activate the flexion/extension of the exoskeleton by a weak contraction of two antagonist muscles. A symmetrical master–slave motion strategy (i.e., the paretic hand motion is activated by the healthy hand) is also available for patients with severe muscle atrophy. An inexpensive microcontroller board was used to implement the electronic control of the exoskeleton and provide feedback to the user. The entire exoskeleton including batteries can be worn on the patient’s arm. The ability to provide a fluid and safe grip, like that of a healthy hand, was verified through kinematic analyses obtained by processing high-framerate videos. The trajectories described by the phalanges of the natural and the exoskeleton finger were compared by means of cross-correlation coefficients; a similarity of about 80% was found. The time required for both closing and opening of the hand exoskeleton was about 0.9 s. A rigid cylindric handlebar containing a load cell measured an average power grasp force of 94.61 N, enough to assist the user in performing most of the activities of daily living. The exoskeleton can be used as an aid and to promote motor function recovery during patient’s neurorehabilitation therapy.


Biosensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Shih-Hung Yang ◽  
Chia-Lin Koh ◽  
Chun-Hang Hsu ◽  
Po-Chuan Chen ◽  
Jia-Wei Chen ◽  
...  

Effective bilateral hand training is desired in rehabilitation programs to restore hand function for people with unilateral hemiplegia, so that they can perform daily activities independently. However, owing to limited human resources, the hand function training available in current clinical settings is significantly less than the adequate amount needed to drive optimal neural reorganization. In this study, we designed a lightweight and portable hand exoskeleton with a hand-sensing glove for bilateral hand training and home-based rehabilitation. The hand-sensing glove measures the hand movement of the less-affected hand using a flex sensor. Thereafter, the affected hand is driven by the hand exoskeleton using the measured hand movements. Compared with the existing hand exoskeletons, our hand exoskeleton improves the flexible mechanism for the back of the hand for better wearing experience and the thumb mechanism to make the pinch gesture possible. We designed a virtual reality game to increase the willingness of repeated movement practice for rehabilitation. Our system not only facilitates bilateral hand training but also assists in activities of daily living. This system could be beneficial for patients with hemiplegia for starting correct and sufficient hand function training in the early stages to optimize their recovery.


2021 ◽  
Vol 212 ◽  
pp. 106831
Author(s):  
Legeng Lin ◽  
Fuhai Zhang ◽  
Lei Yang ◽  
Yili Fu
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 10825
Author(s):  
Qiaoling Meng ◽  
Zhijia Shen ◽  
Zhiyang Nie ◽  
Qingyun Meng ◽  
Zhiyu Wu ◽  
...  

This paper presents the modeling design method for a novel hybrid-driven compliant hand exoskeleton based on the human-machine coupling model for the patients who have requirements on training and assisting. Firstly, the human-machine coupling model is established based on the kinematics characteristics of human fingers and the Bernoulli beam formula. On this basis, the variable stiffness flexible hinge (VSFH) is used to drive the finger extension and the cable-driven mechanism is used to implement the movement of the finger flexion. Here, a hand orthosis is designed in the proposed hand exoskeleton to act as the base and maintain the function position of the hand for patients with hand dysfunction. Then, a final design prototype is fabricated to evaluate the proposed modeling method. In the end, a series of experiments based on the prototype is proceeded to evaluate its capabilities on stretching force for extension, bio-imitability, finger flexion capability, and fingertip force. The results show that the prototype has a significant improvement in all aspects of the ability mentioned above, and has good bionics. The proposed design method can be utilized to implement the rapid design of the hybrid-driven compliant hand exoskeleton with the changed requirements. The novel modeling method can be easily applied in personalized design in rehabilitation engineering.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingying Chen ◽  
Simone Lohlein ◽  
John Nassour ◽  
Stefan K. Ehrlich ◽  
Nicolas Berberich ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Casas ◽  
Kaelin Martin ◽  
Melissa Sandison ◽  
Peter S. Lum

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