Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
Volume 38, Issue 6, Pages 3514-3529Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TRO.2022.3180832
Keywords
Adaptive mechanism; interaction force; rehabi litation; thumb exoskeleton
Categories
Funding
- Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation [JQ19020]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [62025307, U1913209, 62103412]
- Department of Mathematics and Theories ,Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, China
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This article proposes an untethered adaptive thumb exoskeleton that can improve hand function for stroke patients. Experimental validation shows that the exoskeleton can achieve a large workspace and self-aligning for thumb joints, reduce interaction forces, and assist delicate grasping.
Robot-assisted thumb rehabilitation can improve the hand function of stroke patients because the thumb accounts for 40% of hand function. However, existing thumb rehabilitation robots are limited in terms of portability, comfort, adaptability, and independent joint actuation. This article proposes an untethered adaptive thumb exoskeleton that actively assists the 3-degree-of-freedom movements of the thumb. The exoskeleton is composed of an adaptive thumb mechanism and a spherical mechanism. The kinematics, statics, and performances of the adaptive thumb mechanism and the spherical mechanism are analyzed. Experimental validation is performed to test the workspace, self-alignment, interaction forces, admittance controller, and grasping assistance performance of the exoskeleton. The workspace and self-aligning experiments prove that the proposed exoskeleton can achieve a large workspace of the thumb joints and realize self-alignment. The interaction force experimental results show that the exoskeleton can reduce the tangential interaction forces by 76.8% and improve comfort. Finally, the control and delicate grasping assistance experiments validate the exoskeleton's ability to realize the delicate grasping of the thumb. These characteristics show that the thumb exoskeleton has the potential to assist delicate thumb rehabilitation.
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