Research On Hand Rehabilitation Exoskeleton Driven By Soft Actuators

Hand rehabilitation exoskeleton is a robot-assisted rehabilitation medical training equipment that combines the rehabilitation medical theory and robotics.It is mainly to help the hand injuries or the hemiplegia patients do the rehabilitation training,gradually restoring the movement function of each joint of fingers,such as flexing and stretching.However,at present,the hand exoskeletons on the market or studied by the research institute are mainly composed of rigid structures so that there are some disadvantages such as heavy weight and poor flexibility,which is difficult to meet the demands of the rehabilitation group.Firstly,based on the above situation and research on the structure and movement characteristics of human hand joints,this paper designs a set of exoskeleton systems for hand rehabilitation training.Structurally,the exoskeleton consists of three types of soft body drives: buckling,adduction and stretching.The combined configuration of the actuatoes can realize the bidirectional drive of opening and closing of the finger joint.The design of the multi-segment buckling drive can make the exoskeleton provide more DOFs to the finger moving.The back of the hand is connected by a hard material and the angle of joint movement is detected by an attitude sensor.The paper completed the specific structural design of the exoskeleton of the hand,and elaborated on the structural parameters,layout and production process of the three actuators.Then,the control system of the exoskeleton is built.The hardware platform mainly includes a pneumatic circuit composed of a gas source,a tracheal channel,a solenoid valve group and a soft actauator,and a control circuit composed of a single chip microcomputer and a sensing driving component;the software system mainly includes implementation.Data acquisition communication and PID control The lower computer program that outputs the PWM wave duty cycle,and the host computer program that can process data and send control commands.Then,the control system of exoskeleton is built.The hardware platform mainly includes the pneumatic circuit composed of air source,solenoid valve group and software driver,and the control circuit composed of central controller and communication sensor element.The software mainly includes the lower computer program that realizes data acquisition communication and PID control output PWM wave duty ratio,and the upper computer program that can process data and send control commands.Finally,according to the driving form of the soft actuators on the finger joint in the exoskeleton,three test platforms for soft actuators were built.The static and dynamic characteristics of each actuator were tested and the static theoretical model error was analyzed.Through the rehabilitation training experiment of the normal human hand wearing the exoskeleton,the rehabilitation effect of the exoskeleton on the rehabilitation of the finger in the two modes of designated joint rehabilitation training and designated rehabilitation action was verified.