Wang Furui, Jones Christopher L, Shastri Milind, Qian Kai, Kamper Derek G, Sarkar Nilanjan
TRUMPF Photonics Inc, Cranbury, NJ, 08512, USA.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA 60616.
Adv Robot. 2016;30(3):165-177. doi: 10.1080/01691864.2015.1105867. Epub 2016 Mar 7.
Chronic hand impairment is common following stroke. This paper presents an actuated thumb exoskeleton (ATX) to facilitate research in examining motor control and hand rehabilitation. The ATX presented in this work aims to provide independent bi-directional actuation in each of the 5 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) of the thumb using a novel flexible shaft based mechanism that has 5 active DOF and 3 passive DOF. A prototype has been built and experiments have been conducted to measure the allowable workspace at the thumb and evaluate the kinematic and kinetic performance of the ATX. The experimental results show that the ATX is able to provide individual actuation at all 5 thumb joints with high joint velocity and torque capacities. Further improvement and future work are discussed.
中风后慢性手部功能障碍很常见。本文介绍了一种主动式拇指外骨骼（ATX），以促进在运动控制和手部康复研究方面的进展。本研究中提出的ATX旨在通过一种新颖的基于挠性轴的机构，在拇指的5个自由度（DOF）中每个自由度都提供独立的双向驱动，该机构具有5个主动自由度和3个被动自由度。已制作出一个原型，并进行了实验，以测量拇指的允许工作空间，并评估ATX的运动学和动力学性能。实验结果表明，ATX能够在所有5个拇指关节处提供单独驱动，具有较高的关节速度和扭矩能力。文中还讨论了进一步的改进和未来的工作。
