Design And Performance Study Of Soft Rehabilitation Glove

Soft rehabilitation gloves have the advantages of light weight,comfortable wearing and human-computer interaction safety,so they have attracted more and more researchers’ attention.In order to improve the rehabilitation applicability and assist grasping ability of soft rehabilitation gloves,this paper studies the structural design,theoretical modeling,simulation analysis and experimental verification of soft rehabilitation gloves.The main work is as follows:A soft rehabilitation glove with multiple rehabilitation postures and assisted grasping modes was designed.The proposed soft rehabilitation glove is composed of five segmented pneumatic networks(Pneu Nets)bidirectional bending actuators with a variable height structure.In the rehabilitation mode,it can assist the hand to form four rehabilitation postures: full fist,straight fist,hook fist and table top,and can also assist in the extension of the fingers.In the assisted grasping mode,it can assist the hands to grasp objects with cylindrical and large flat contours.The theoretical model of the four-finger actuator except the thumb was established,which mainly includes the bending angle model,the fingertip force model and the fingertip trajectory model.Simulation and experimental analysis were carried out.The results show that the errors of the bending angle and fingertip force model are both within 15%,and the modeling results of the fingertip trajectory model are in good agreement with the simulation and experimental results.The performance of the soft actuator was fully analyzed by simulation.The different variable height forms and bottom layer thickness of four finger soft actuators except thumb were simulated and analyzed,and the structure with the best performance was determined.The motion posture of a single finger was analyzed,and the influence of the tilt angle of the thumb actuator chamber on its bending performance was studied.The trajectory of the fingertip of a single finger was simulated and analyzed,and the influence of the distance between the chambers of the reverse bending module on its reverse bending performance was studied.Soft actuators and soft rehabilitation gloves were prepared,and experimental tests were carried out to investigate the bending angle,fingertip force,reverse bending ability and fingertip trajectory of the soft rehabilitation gloves.The designed soft actuator can produce a bending angle of 261° under an air pressure of 100 k Pa,and can produce a fingertip force of 1.59 N under an air pressure of 130 k Pa,which meets the basic requirements of hand rehabilitation.The design of the reverse bending module can increase the force of the reverse bending fingertip by 40% when the original air pressure is 60 k Pa,which can effectively help the hand stretch.A closed-loop feedback control system for the fingertip force of the software driver was established.The assisted grasping performance of the soft rehabilitation glove was studied.The results show that it has certain advantages in grasping objects with large plane contours and objects with cylindrical contours.