Design of Wearable Hand Rehabilitation Glove With Bionic Fiber-Reinforced Actuator

Background: The hand motor function is lost and activities in daily life (ADLs) are affected due to some illnesses such as stroke and hemiplegia. As a coping way, we present a wearable rehabilitation glove with the bionic actuator for restoring the hand function and the motor control ability lost by stroke patients. Methods: The soft pneumatic bionic actuator (SPBA) is developed on the basis of the research of human hand bone structure and finger joint characteristics and a series of tests are conducted. Besides, we built the rehabilitation glove system based on the proposed SPBAs to verify the availability due to typical gesture, mirror therapy (MT) and grasping experiment for irregular objects. Result: The bending angle of SPBA can reach 260°. The output force of it can reach 5.1N with 0.25 MPa air pressure input. The maximum variance of the bending angle can be concluded at 5.1° in MT. The grasping experiments of the glove worn on the hand or not shows the proposed glove is flexible, the grip force is large and achieve stable grasping of objects. Conclusion: The designed SPBA is satisfied with the requirements of rehabilitation training and the proposed glove restore the normal hand motion of patients in ADLs.