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Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes

Robotic devices are being employed in more and more sectors to enhance, streamline, and augment the outcomes of a wide variety of human activities. Wearable robots arise indeed as of-vital-importance tools for telerehabilitation or home assistance targeting people affected by motor disabilities. In...

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Autores principales: Secciani, Nicola, Brogi, Chiara, Pagliai, Marco, Buonamici, Francesco, Gerli, Filippo, Vannetti, Federica, Bianchini, Massimo, Volpe, Yary, Ridolfi, Alessandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8568131/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34744679
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2021.750385
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author Secciani, Nicola
Brogi, Chiara
Pagliai, Marco
Buonamici, Francesco
Gerli, Filippo
Vannetti, Federica
Bianchini, Massimo
Volpe, Yary
Ridolfi, Alessandro
author_facet Secciani, Nicola
Brogi, Chiara
Pagliai, Marco
Buonamici, Francesco
Gerli, Filippo
Vannetti, Federica
Bianchini, Massimo
Volpe, Yary
Ridolfi, Alessandro
author_sort Secciani, Nicola
collection PubMed
description Robotic devices are being employed in more and more sectors to enhance, streamline, and augment the outcomes of a wide variety of human activities. Wearable robots arise indeed as of-vital-importance tools for telerehabilitation or home assistance targeting people affected by motor disabilities. In particular, the field of “Robotics for Medicine and Healthcare” is attracting growing interest. The development of such devices is a primarily addressed topic since the increasing number of people in need of rehabilitation or assistive therapies (due to population aging) growingly weighs on the healthcare systems of the nation. Besides, the necessity to move to clinics represents an additional logistic burden for patients and their families. Among the various body parts, the hand is specially investigated since it most ensures the independence of an individual, and thus, the restoration of its dexterity is considered a high priority. In this study, the authors present the development of a fully wearable, portable, and tailor-made hand exoskeleton designed for both home assistance and telerehabilitation. Its purpose is either to assist patients during activities of daily living by running a real-time intention detection algorithm or to be used for remotely supervised or unsupervised rehabilitation sessions by performing exercises preset by therapists. Throughout the mechatronic design process, special attention has been paid to the complete wearability and comfort of the system to produce a user-friendly device capable of assisting people in their daily life or enabling recorded home rehabilitation sessions allowing the therapist to monitor the state evolution of the patient. Such a hand exoskeleton system has been designed, manufactured, and preliminarily tested on a subject affected by spinal muscular atrophy, and some results are reported at the end of the article.
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spelling pubmed-85681312021-11-05 Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes Secciani, Nicola Brogi, Chiara Pagliai, Marco Buonamici, Francesco Gerli, Filippo Vannetti, Federica Bianchini, Massimo Volpe, Yary Ridolfi, Alessandro Front Neurorobot Neuroscience Robotic devices are being employed in more and more sectors to enhance, streamline, and augment the outcomes of a wide variety of human activities. Wearable robots arise indeed as of-vital-importance tools for telerehabilitation or home assistance targeting people affected by motor disabilities. In particular, the field of “Robotics for Medicine and Healthcare” is attracting growing interest. The development of such devices is a primarily addressed topic since the increasing number of people in need of rehabilitation or assistive therapies (due to population aging) growingly weighs on the healthcare systems of the nation. Besides, the necessity to move to clinics represents an additional logistic burden for patients and their families. Among the various body parts, the hand is specially investigated since it most ensures the independence of an individual, and thus, the restoration of its dexterity is considered a high priority. In this study, the authors present the development of a fully wearable, portable, and tailor-made hand exoskeleton designed for both home assistance and telerehabilitation. Its purpose is either to assist patients during activities of daily living by running a real-time intention detection algorithm or to be used for remotely supervised or unsupervised rehabilitation sessions by performing exercises preset by therapists. Throughout the mechatronic design process, special attention has been paid to the complete wearability and comfort of the system to produce a user-friendly device capable of assisting people in their daily life or enabling recorded home rehabilitation sessions allowing the therapist to monitor the state evolution of the patient. Such a hand exoskeleton system has been designed, manufactured, and preliminarily tested on a subject affected by spinal muscular atrophy, and some results are reported at the end of the article. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8568131/ /pubmed/34744679 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2021.750385 Text en Copyright © 2021 Secciani, Brogi, Pagliai, Buonamici, Gerli, Vannetti, Bianchini, Volpe and Ridolfi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Secciani, Nicola
Brogi, Chiara
Pagliai, Marco
Buonamici, Francesco
Gerli, Filippo
Vannetti, Federica
Bianchini, Massimo
Volpe, Yary
Ridolfi, Alessandro
Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes
title Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes
title_full Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes
title_fullStr Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes
title_full_unstemmed Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes
title_short Wearable Robots: An Original Mechatronic Design of a Hand Exoskeleton for Assistive and Rehabilitative Purposes
title_sort wearable robots: an original mechatronic design of a hand exoskeleton for assistive and rehabilitative purposes
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8568131/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34744679
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2021.750385
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