Soft Robotic Gloves with Thin McKibben Muscles for Hand Assist and Rehabilitation

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed, designed, prototyped, and demonstrated a new soft robotic rehabilitation glove with thin McKibben muscles. Rehabilitation gloves have recently attracted considerable attention owing to an increase in the number of patients and a decrease in the number of medical personnel with declining birth rates and rapidly aging society. We proposed a rehabilitation glove that can flex and extend fingers actively using thin McKibben muscles; these are lightweight, flexible, high force per weight, linear actuators. This glove will address the limitations of existing rehabilitation gloves in terms of size, weight, and insufficient extension force. Two design concepts are newly proposed in this paper: a ”three-point bending structure” and a ”flat braided muscle”. By employing these concepts, the glove can be used to extend and flex fingers with thin McKibben muscles, and the entire glove can remain compact within the wrist and hand. With respect to wearability, which is very important in rehabilitation gloves, we contrived a new fitting mechanism and a wearing aid. Experiments conducted showed that the fingers could be successfully extended and flexed from a fingertip angle of -49° to 106° and a 500 g water bottle could be grasped under relaxed conditions. The study showed promising results, and we believe that this glove has immense potential as a future rehabilitation glove.