Design Of Wearable Rehabilitation Gloves Based On Soft Actuator

The human hand is a complex multi-joint system capable of performing a variety of tasks.Unfortunately,due to aging,accidents,strokes and other reasons,many individuals will be unable to reach their full potential capacity.Consequently,it is fundamental to develop a safe and reliable hand rehabilitation device to assist patients restore their motor functions.The main work of this thesis is as follows.(1)Based on the present situation of existing hand rehabilitation devices and the analysis of the human hand structure as well as the spatial motion model,a wearable rehabilitation glove was designed.It can actuate finger to move in all directions in one degree of freedom.In the structure design,the structure and bending principle of the actuator were analyzed.Solid Works and ABAQUS software were utilized to do CAD modeling and finite element analysis(FEA)to optimize the design and performance evaluation of the actuator.The Solid Works design of the actuator was imported into ABAQUS software to study the bending performance of the actuator.In addition,the fabrication process of the actuator was also studied.(2)The general scheme of the pneumatic control system of soft rehabilitation glove was designed,which incorporates five units: control unit,pump unit,valve unit,sensor unit and soft actuator.In terms of the hardware system of the soft rehabilitation glove,the plan of pneumatic circuit and electrical circuit was finished.In the aspect of software system,serial correspondence and programming of upper and lower computers were completed.The control system of soft rehabilitation glove can control finger position through switch interface,software program or EMG signal,and realize the rehabilitation treatment of patients with different degrees of hand.(3)The function test of a single bending actuator was performed,including the experiment on the connection between air pressure and bending angle,and air pressure and fingertip force,which was conducted to verify that the simulation results were consistent with the experimental results and that the designed actuators met the patient’s grip strength requirements.Three rehabilitation training mode experiments were conducted on the soft body rehabilitation glove: the control experiment of the upper PC,the mirror following experiment and the experiment of online identification of surface EMG signals.Through the analysis of the experimental results,it was demonstrated that the structure of the soft rehabilitation glove is reasonable in structure design and the system works well,which can realize the rehabilitation treatment for patients with different degrees of hand.