A Non-Invasive, Soft Robotic Wearable Glove to Attenuate Hand Tremors

Abstract

Hand tremors are a widespread medical condition that decreases a patient’s quality of life. Due to uncontrollable hand shaking, patients have difficulty completing essential daily tasks. Many also experience embarrassment and anxiety in social settings, which negatively affects many areas of their lives. Current treatments are often invasive, ineffective, and have unwanted side effects. Some non-invasive solutions excessively limit hand motion, making them ineffective in helping the wearer complete tasks, while others are highly visible and bulky. This paper presents a minimalistic, non-invasive, wearable glove that uses active feedback control and miniature, soft robotic pneumatic actuators to attenuate hand tremors while allowing freedom of movement in other directions. We 3D-modelled the hand and wrist and designed our glove and actuators using Fusion 360. These models were imported into Matlab and Simulink, where we simulated the hand tremor, actuation, and control system using spatial contact forces. To actively reduce the tremor amplitude, we used an accelerometer to detect the onset of tremor motion and create a real-time estimate of the hand’s position. This estimate drove a closed-loop PI controller that produced force commands for the pneumatic actuators, which applied a counterforce opposing the direction of hand motion. Based on our simulation results, our active glove control system design successfully reduced the hand tremor amplitude by 75%, from a baseline of ±8.0mm to a significantly improved amplitude of ±2.0mm. These results indicate that our proposed solution could effectively attenuate hand tremors to a level that would increase the wearer’s quality of life.