A Soft Exoglove Equipped With a Wearable Muscle-Machine Interface Based on Forcemyography and Electromyography

Abstract

Soft, lightweight, underactuated assistive gloves (exogloves) can be useful for enhancing the capabilities of a healthy individual or to assist the rehabilitation of patients who suffer from conditions that limit the mobility of their fingers. However, most solutions found in the literature do not offer individual control of the fingers, hindering the execution of different types of grasps. In this letter, we focus on the development of a soft, underactuated, tendon-driven exo-glove that is equipped with a muscle-machine interface combining Electromyography and Forcemyography sensors to decode the user intent and allow the execution of specific grasp types. The device is experimentally tested and evaluated using different types of experiments: first, grasp experiments to assess the capability of the proposed muscle machine interface to discriminate between different grasp types and second, force exertion capability experiments, which evaluate the maximum forces that can be applied for different grasp types. The proposed device weighs 1150 g and costs $\sim$ 1000 USD (in parts). The exoglove is capable of considerably improving the grasping capabilities of the user, facilitating the execution of different types of grasps and exerting forces up to 20 N.