Search Results (5)

Exoskeletons play a crucial role in joint healthcare by providing targeted support and rehabilitation for individuals with musculoskeletal diseases. As an assistive device, the accurate monitoring of the user’s joint signals and exoskeleton status using wearable sensors is essential to ensure the efficiency of conducting complex tasks in various scenarios. However, balancing sensitivity and stretchability in wearable devices for exoskeleton applications remains a significant challenge. Here, we introduce a wearable strain sensor for detecting finger and knee joint motions. The sensor utilizes a stretchable elastic conductive network, incorporating multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) into Ecoflex. The concentration of MWCNTs has been meticulously optimized to achieve both a high gauge factor (GF) and stability. With its high sensitivity, the sensor is enabled to be applied in the angle monitoring of finger joints. By integrating the sensor with human knee joints and an exoskeleton device, it can simultaneously detect the flexion and extension movements in real-time. This sensor holds significant potential for enhancing exoskeleton performance and improving joint healthcare technologies. Full article

This study designs and develops a wearable exoskeleton piano assistance system for individuals recovering from neurological injuries, aiming to help users regain the ability to perform complex tasks such as playing the piano. While soft robotic exoskeletons have proven effective in rehabilitation therapy and daily activity assistance, challenges remain in performing highly dexterous tasks due to structural complexity and insufficient motion accuracy. To address these issues, we developed a modular division method based on multi-domain mapping and a top-down process model. This method integrates the functional domain, structural domain, and user needs domain, and explores the principles and methods for creating functional construction modules, overcoming the limitations of traditional top-down approaches in design flexibility. By closely combining layout constraints with the design model, this method significantly improves the accuracy and efficiency of module configuration, offering a new path for the development of piano practice assistance devices. The results demonstrate that this device innovatively combines piano practice with rehabilitation training and through the introduction of ontological modeling methods, resolves the challenges of multidimensional needs mapping. Based on five user requirements (P), we calculated the corresponding demand weight (K), making the design more aligned with user needs. The device excels in enhancing motion accuracy, interactivity, and comfort, filling the gap in traditional piano assistance devices in terms of multi-functionality and high adaptability, and offering new ideas for the design and promotion of intelligent assistive devices. Simulation analysis, combined with the motion trajectory of the finger’s proximal joint, calculates that 60° is the maximum bending angle for the aforementioned joint. Physical validation confirms the device’s superior performance in terms of reliability and high-precision motion reproduction, meeting the requirements for piano-assisted training. Through multi-domain mapping, the top-down process model, and modular design, this research effectively breaks through the design flexibility and functional adaptability bottleneck of traditional piano assistance devices while integrating neurological rehabilitation with music education, opening up a new application path for intelligent assistive devices in the fields of rehabilitation medicine and arts education, and providing a solution for cross-disciplinary technology fusion and innovative development. Full article

For injured and after-stroke patients who temporarily lose their hand’s grasping abilities, assisting them in regaining their index finger mobility is very important in the rehabilitation process. In this paper, a finger rehabilitation device based on one degree-of-freedom (DOF) linkage mechanism is designed, aiming to lead the index finger through the flexion–extension trajectory during grasping tasks. Two types of one-DOF mechanisms, a four-bar linkage and a Watt-I six-bar linkage, are synthesized for the task trajectory. Various algorithms such as PSO, GA, and GA–BFGS are adopted and compared for the synthesis of these two types of mechanisms, among which the Watt-I six-bar linkage obtained with GA–BFGS shows the optimal performance in accuracy. Clinical biomechanical data are utilized to perform static analyses of the mechanisms, and the feasibility of the Watt-I six-bar linkage models is tested, compared, and demonstrated. Finally, the prototype of the six-bar linkage as well as a wearable exoskeleton finger rehabilitation device are designed to show how they are applied in the finger rehabilitation scenario. Full article

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. Full article

For more than a decade, many countries have been actively developing robotic assistive devices to assist in the rehabilitation of individuals with limb disability to regain function in the extremities. The exoskeleton assistive device in this study has been designed primarily for hemiplegic stroke patients to aid in the extension of fingers to open up the palm to simulate the effects of rehabilitation. This exoskeleton was designed as an anterior-support type to achieve palmar extension and acts as a robotic assistive device for rehabilitation in bilateral upper limb task training. Testing results show that this wearable exoskeleton assistive device with human factor consideration using percentile dimensions can provide comfortable wear on patients as well as adequate torque to pull individual fingers into flexion towards the palm for rehabilitation. We hope this exoskeleton device can help stroke patients with loss of function in the upper extremities to resume motor activities in order to maintain activities of daily living. Full article