Abstract
A kind of wearable exoskeleton soft rehabilitation glove is proposed for the dementia in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with loss of hand function, limited range of motion, and insufficient finger muscle strength to carry out rehabilitation exercise training in a passive or auxiliary way. A novel soft joint structure based on composite fabric material is introduced for the design of the soft glove with bionic method, and experiments are conducted to verify the effeteness of the proposed soft rehabilitation glove. The test results showed that when the fluid pressure was 0.42 MPa, the joint angle of MCP, PIP and DIP could be up to 81°, 98°, 72°, and produce output torque of 1.18Nm, 1.44Nm and 1.82Nm respectively, which meets the requirements of the hand rehabilitation. A dynamic rehabilitation-training test of the rehabilitation glove was also carried out, and the results showed that the movement frequency of soft fingers could reach 30 times/min, which is sufficient for repetitive flexion/extension exercise. In order to verify the grasping characteristics of the soft glove for irregular objects, experiments were carried out. The experimental results showed that the bionic soft glove was dexterous in grasping, which conforms to the universal grasping characteristics of human hands, has the function of assisting daily life (ADL), and meets the requirements of rehabilitation.
Highlights
Dementia represents arguably the most significant social, economic, and medical crisis of our time, which is a syndrome of severe cognitive loss caused by illness or injury
In this work, a fabric-reinforced soft rehabilitation glove is proposed, and the soft joint structure is discussed by referring to the movement mechanism of human fingers, based on composite elastic fabric
To verify the proposed soft rehabilitation glove including specific functions, bending angle, motion trajectory, and output torque, experiments are carried for the soft finger and glove, and the relevant conclusions are obtained as follows: 1) Warp and weft tensile tests are carried out on the tensile testing machine for the composite warp-knitted fabric
Summary
Received 9 December 2019; revised 19 February 2020; accepted 9 March 2020. Date of publication 19 March 2020; date of current version 6 April 2020.
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