A soft pneumatic glove with multiple rehabilitation postures and assisted grasping modes

Abstract

This article proposes a novel soft pneumatic glove with multiple rehabilitation postures and assisted grasping modes, which is composed of five segmented pneumatic networks (PneuNets) bidirectional bending actuators with a variable height structure. The metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint chambers and the distal phalangeal (DIP) joint chambers are designed with a trapezoidal side profile, which enhances the reverse bending ability and can effectively expand the range of hand rehabilitation activities. In order to avoid hindering the forward bending, the chambers of the reverse bending module are designed as a triangular prism chamber. Experimental tests were performed and the results show that the soft actuator can produce a bending angle of 261° under an air pressure of 100 kPa, and can produce a fingertip force of 1.59 N under an air pressure of 130 kPa. In the rehabilitation mode, the designed soft rehabilitation gloves can help the hand to form four kinds of rehabilitation postures, namely full fist, straight fist, hook fist and table top. By ventilating different finger joints, and it can also help the fingers to stretch. Under the initial air pressure of 60 kPa, the design of the reverse bending module can increase the fingertip force of reverse bending by 40 %. In the assisted grasping mode, by adjusting the input air pressure, it can help the hand to grasp objects with cylindrical and large plane contour, which is very useful for the rehabilitation of patients with partial loss of hand function. • A novel soft pneumatic glove with multiple rehabilitation postures and assisted grasping modes is proposed. • The soft glove is composed of five PneuNets bidirectional bending actuators with a variable height structure. • The soft actuator can produce a angle of 261° under pressure of 100 kPa, and a force of 1.59 N under pressure of 130 kPa.