Design of wearable hand rehabilitation glove with soft hoop-reinforced pneumatic actuator

Abstract

Traditional hand rehabilitation gloves usually use electrical motor as actuator with disadvantages of heaviness, bulkiness and less compliance. Recently, the soft pneumatic actuator is demonstrated to be more suitable for hand rehabilitation compared to motor because of its inherent compliance, flexibility and safety. In order to design a wearable glove in request of hand rehabilitation, a soft hoop-reinforced pneumatic actuator is presented. By analyzing the influence of its section shape and geometrical parameters on bending performance, the preferred structure of actuator is achieved based on finite element method. An improved hoop-reinforced actuator is designed after the fabrication and initial measurement, and its mathematical model is built in order to quickly obtain the bending angle response when pressurized. A series of experiment about bending performance are implemented to validate the agreement between the finite element, mathematical and experimental results, and the performance improvement of hoop-reinforced actuator. In addition, the designed hand rehabilitation glove is tested by measuring its output force and actual wearing experience. The output force can reach 2.5 to 3 N when the pressure is 200 kPa. The research results indicate that the designed glove with hoop-reinforced actuator can meet the requirements of hand rehabilitation and has prospective application in hand rehabilitation.