Portable Wearable Device Design for Precise Hand Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients

Abstract

The hand is one of the most important organs of the human body and plays a vital role in our daily activities (such as grasping, writing, driving and typing). Hand movement dysfunction caused by stroke has a great impact on our daily life. Therefore, it is necessary to restore its normal motor function through hand rehabilitation training. In this article, I propose a portable hand exoskeleton robot with individual joint motions for hand assistance. The human hand is an important part of many activities of daily living (ADL). Improving hand function through rehabilitation and ADL assistance can greatly improve the quality of life of people with impaired hand function. It is important to implement various actions in hand rehabilitation and assistance. However, most of the previous hand exoskeleton robots are large in size and expensive, making it impossible to perform rehabilitation exercises independently at home. Therefore, my design concept is to make the exoskeleton hand robot suitable for home, so it is necessary to improve portability and economy. First, it analyzes the physiological structure, movement characteristics and movement space of the human hand. According to the movement characteristics of the fingers, the degree of freedom of the fingers is reasonably simplified, and the mechanical structure of the finger rehabilitation robot is designed. The robot is worn on the hand, and the tendon is connected to the steering gear through the palm of the hand. The driving part is designed to be worn on the forearm, which is light in weight and easy to carry. It is customized and can be easily manufactured. Experiments were carried out to compare whether the grasping work of the robot while wearing can be completed well to see whether the movement was successfully implemented. It has been proven that decomposing motion into individual joint motions is more effective for stably maintaining actual objects.