Study On The Rehabilitation Of Wearable Pneumatic Wrist

Rehabilitation training is an important means of wrist rehabilitation. Most of traditional rehabilitation training devices will use motor as the driving system. During the moving process they will produce impact with dramatic changes. It may bring the second injury to the patient’s joints. In recent years, the flexible pneumatic actuators have gradually attracted people’s attention, especially in the medical field. A new type of flexible pneumatic actuator has been researched, which acts on the wearable wrist rehabilitation device to meet the flexibility and safety requirements of the wrist rehabilitation training.Based on the theory of the flexible pneumatic actuator, the finite element models have been built to complete the kinematic and mechanical analysis. According to the mechanism of the flexible pneumatic actuator, several design schemes for the cross section are proposed to choose the most optimal one which has the best performance. The dimension parameters of the design which affect the kinematic and mechanical characteristics of actuator are analyzed. According to the analyzed outcomes and the practical applications, the initial parameters of the design are improved to get the final design.With the mold of flexible pneumatic actuator being made, the silicone rubber is used to make the physical production of the actuator. The kinematic and mechanical characteristics are measured in the relative experiments of the actuator. The data from the experiments is used to compare with the simulation.On the basis of the designed actuator, the wearable pneumatic wrist rehabilitation device has been developed and the basic motion’ control of the device has been done. Experimental results show that the rehabilitation training can perform well by the reasonable control strategy. Finally, the output torque of the wrist rehabilitation device is tested in order to verify the feasibility of the wearable pneumatic wrist rehabilitation device.