Fishbone-inspired soft robotic glove for hand rehabilitation with multi-degrees-of-freedom

Abstract

Soft robotic gloves have shown great potential in accelerating the rehabilitation process of individuals with hand pathologies. However, most of the existing soft assistive devices allow a single degree-of-freedom (DoF) movement for each finger while independent motion of finger joints plays a crucial role in hand rehabilitation. Trying to address these challenges, a novel fishbone-inspired soft actuator with multi-DoFs is proposed in this article for the first time, to the best knowledge of the authors, and a preliminary soft glove is developed. With the assistance of the glove, the Metacarpophalangeal (MCP) and the proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joints of human fingers can bend or extend independently. In this paper, the basic concept of the actuators is illustrated in detail and the structural parameters are determined with FEM models. Additionally, several groups of experiments are conducted to demonstrate the varied motion patterns of the actuators and the bending curvature of each segment in different patterns is calculated. Lastly, the efficacy as well as the dexterity of the proposed soft glove is further validated by performing complicated gestures and conducting functional grasping tests.