A one-DOF passive glove for thumb rehabilitation

Abstract

Wearable robots are becoming increasingly practical to use to rehabilitate wounded parts of the body as the number of injuries to the hand, particularly fingers, has increased. Wearable robots are designed to help people save time and money. This exoskeleton is intended to rehabilitate the thumb such that it may do an opposing movement with one Degree Of Freedom (DOF) and a cable system. Two drums, one on the thumb and the other on the tip of the assistive finger place the cables, which feature a cable adjusting screw that can be adjusted for fingers of various lengths. To choose the assistive finger from 4 intact fingers, the two perspectives of the cable length changes and finger forces are compared. Finally, with the help of these comparisons, the middle finger was selected as the assistive finger. Furthermore, the cable traction forces do not hurt the fingers joins due to a safety factor of 36.78. The biggest angle difference between the thumb and middle is at 140 degrees; yet, the thumb performs better at the third joint due to the smallest angle difference.