Development of a Wearable Finger Exoskeleton for Rehabilitation

Abstract

This research work shows a new architecture of a novel wearable finger exoskeleton for rehabilitation; the proposed design consists of a one degree of freedom mechanism that generates the flexion and extension movement for the proximal, medial and distal phalange of the fingers to assist patients during the rehabilitation process, after neurological trauma, such as a stroke. The anatomy and anthropometric measures for the hand were used to define the design of the mechanism. In the analytic part, the representative equations for the forward and inverse kinematic analysis of the fingers are obtained, also a dynamic analysis is presented. The position and displacement continued for the structural analysis, were developed by following a static analysis, to know the deformation that the structure links show when an external load is applied in the mechanism. As result, a prototype was manufactured with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) using an additive manufacturing machine.

Keywords

• additive manufacturing
• finger exoskeleton
• rehabilitation robotics
• robot design and simulation
• wearable device