Study On A Soft Exoskeleton Robot For The Hand Rehabilitation

It is recognized that stroke is one of the three biggest diseases that threatening human's health,and the probability of hemiplegia caused by stroke is more than fifty percent,these patients' rehabilitation demand has caused great concern of society.In order to solve various problems such as structural complexity,being not portable,hidden trouble in safety existing in research result at present,the paper designs a set of soft exoskeleton robot system to assist patients to stretch finger in the early rehabilitation.The system includes a soft exoskeleton glove,a computer,a sEMG acquisition equipment,mini-vacuum pump,multifold solenoid valve and multi-controllers.The main part of the soft exoskeleton glove in the system are soft actuators,soft actuator with semi-cylindrical appearance is made by silicone.It is hollow cavity,and being one-way stretch bending when inflated.The stand or fall of designing actuator directly affects the performance of the system.Therefore,based on the human hands' biological characteristics,the paper mainly describes the design and production of the soft actuator,and use finite element software ABAQUS to do various structural deformation simulation to increase the reliability of design.The system adopts pneumatic drive,in the process of designing control system,select mode of air pump and solenoid valve firstly,then the single pump driving multiple soft actuators is implemented through the gas path diversion,both the cost and weight of the system are greatly reduced.The system is controlled by sEMG or by PC.sEMG control realizes an operation of the system controlled by sEMG,and myoelectric signals can be inputted into computer by the wireless receiving device,realizes the remote collection of signals,and increases the use flexibility of the system,but can only achieves continuous motion of actuator by the system.PC control issues control commands to slave computer by host computer,it is more accurately and directly.Compared with s EMG control,suspend mode is added in PC control in order to carry out fetching function except the sports training.sEMG control also can switch to host computer control mode.In order to be controlled accurately for the whole system in the future,use sensor which bends in one direction to measure the relationship between air inflow of actuator and bending angle,the stability and controllability of the system is verified by grasping different inanimate objects through the control system.Soft robots is a new direction in the field of robot,the paper applies the thought of soft robot to rehabilitation medical science creatively,uses the characteristics of material itself to achieve the effect of the traditional mechanical structure,reduces total mass and the cost of the system greatly,eliminates the potential safety hazard,and is more suitable for application in the field of rehabilitation.