Let Me Give You a Hand: Enhancing Human Grasp Force With a Soft Robotic Assistive Glove

Abstract

Soft robotic gloves are designed to assist individuals with daily tasks that involve grasping. Such devices are however often hampered by an inability to generate enough force to enable them to perform the tasks for which they were designed. This study evaluates the grasping capabilities of a novel textile soft robotic glove, which has performance-enhancing integrated elastic band actuators. We conducted a user study with 20 participants to assess the assistive glove's effectiveness. Our novel evaluation method, using surface electromyography sensors to measure muscle activity, enabled us to determine the respective grasping force contributions of the assistive device and the user. Our findings indicate that the device provides consistent grasp assistance across a force range from 20 to 80 Newtons. Average assistance for the fingers was 15.8 Newtons, with a maximum of 33.3 Newtons, while for the thumb it averaged at 12.4 Newtons, with a maximum of 23.3 Newtons. The results were validated using Linear Mixed-Effects Models, demonstrating statistically significant findings with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</i> values of below 0.01. A user satisfaction survey (QUEST 2.0) suggested high perceived value given its excellent rating of 4.53 out of 5. Overall, these results suggest that the device can make a significant difference, helping users when performing grasping tasks.