Design And Evaluation Of Wearable Exoskeleton Matching Human Hand Function Movement

Hand exoskeleton is an indispensable tool for rehabilitation for patients with limb disabilities.However,due to the complex physiological structure and flexible grasping capabilities of the human hand,how to design a wearable exoskeleton that matches the complex functional movement of the human hand is the current difficulty in the field of robotics research.To solve this difficulty,this paper has carried out a systematic and indepth study from three aspects: the structural characteristics of the human hand and the law of hand motion,the design of exoskeleton finger joints and driving structure,and the design of the exoskeleton control system.The main contents include:1)Explore the law of hand from two aspects: physiological structure and kinematics.In terms of physiological structure,the 16 main joints of the human hand are divided into three types: hinge type,saddle type and ankle type according to the number of degrees of freedom of the joints and the position of the joint rotation center;Correlation analysis and principal component analysis are carried out to explore the cooperative motion law between human hand joints.2)Design an exoskeleton joint structure that meets the characteristics of the human hand structure and an exoskeleton driving structure that matches the law of human hand movement.According to the structural characteristics of the three types of joints,a singleaxis rotation joint motion model,a composite MCP joint motion model,and a composite thumb CMC joint motion model are established,and the corresponding mechanical joint structure is designed according to the motion model;According to the law of cooperative motion,an exoskeleton drive structure composed of two single-motor modules and a dualmotor coupling module is designed to realize the matching of exoskeleton movement and human hand movement.The coupling drive gives the exoskeleton the movement characteristics of less input and more output,and then realizes the lightweight design of the exoskeleton structure.3)Design the exoskeleton control system.Using the data glove as the input of the control system,a method of transforming the 16-dimensional joint angle vector of the data glove into a 4-dimensional motor angle vector is proposed.The circuit is built and the control program is designed to realize the movement control of the exoskeleton device.4)Test the similarity and difference between the exoskeleton device and human hand movement through experiments.The exoskeleton prototype is processed and assembled,and experiments are designed to compare the similarity and difference of the angle changes between the human hand and the exoskeleton joint when grasping different objects.The results show that the exoskeleton is consistent with the movement of the human hand,and the exoskeleton has the characteristics of matching the movement of the human hand.