Ahmed Tanvir, Assad-Uz-Zaman Md, Islam Md Rasedul, Gottheardt Drew, McGonigle Erin, Brahmi Brahim, Rahman Mohammad Habibur
Biomedical/Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA.
Richard J. Resch School of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Green Bay, WI 54311, USA.
Micromachines (Basel). 2021 Oct 20;12(11):1274. doi: 10.3390/mi12111274.
Home-based hand rehabilitation has excellent potential as it may reduce patient dropouts due to travel, transportation, and insurance constraints. Being able to perform exercises precisely, accurately, and in a repetitive manner, robot-aided portable devices have gained much traction these days in hand rehabilitation. However, existing devices fall short in allowing some key natural movements, which are crucial to achieving full potential motion in performing activities of daily living. Firstly, existing exoskeleton type devices often restrict or suffer from uncontrolled wrist and forearm movement during finger exercises due to their setup of actuation and transmission mechanism. Secondly, they restrict passive metacarpophalangeal (MCP) abduction-adduction during MCP flexion-extension motion. Lastly, though a few of them can provide isolated finger ROM, none of them can offer isolated joint motion as per therapeutic need. All these natural movements are crucial for effective robot-aided finger rehabilitation. To bridge these gaps, in this research, a novel lightweight robotic device, namely "Flexohand", has been developed for hand rehabilitation. A novel compliant mechanism has been developed and included in Flexohand to compensate for the passive movement of MCP abduction-adduction. The isolated and composite digit joint flexion-extension has been achieved by integrating a combination of sliding locks for IP joints and a wire locking system for finger MCP joints. Besides, the intuitive design of Flexohand inherently allows wrist joint movement during hand digit exercises. Experiments of passive exercises involving isolated joint motion, composite joint motions of individual fingers, and isolated joint motion of multiple fingers have been conducted to validate the functionality of the developed device. The experimental results show that Flexohand addresses the limitations of existing robot-aided hand rehabilitation devices.
居家手部康复具有巨大潜力，因为它可以减少因出行、交通和保险限制导致的患者退出情况。机器人辅助便携式设备能够精确、准确且重复地进行训练，近年来在手部康复领域备受关注。然而，现有的设备在允许一些关键的自然运动方面存在不足，而这些自然运动对于在日常生活活动中实现最大程度的运动潜能至关重要。首先，现有的外骨骼式设备在进行手指训练时，由于其驱动和传动机制的设置，常常会限制或无法控制手腕和前臂的运动。其次，它们在掌指关节（MCP）屈伸运动过程中限制了被动的掌指关节外展 - 内收。最后，尽管其中一些设备可以提供单独手指的关节活动度（ROM），但没有一个能根据治疗需求提供单独的关节运动。所有这些自然运动对于有效的机器人辅助手指康复都至关重要。为了弥补这些差距，在本研究中，开发了一种新型的轻型机器人设备，即“Flexohand”，用于手部康复。已开发出一种新型的柔顺机构并将其纳入Flexohand，以补偿掌指关节外展 - 内收的被动运动。通过结合用于指间关节（IP）的滑动锁和用于手指掌指关节的钢丝锁定系统，实现了单独和复合手指关节的屈伸。此外，Flexohand的直观设计本质上允许在手部手指训练期间进行腕关节运动。已经进行了涉及单独关节运动、单个手指的复合关节运动以及多个手指的单独关节运动的被动运动实验，以验证所开发设备的功能。实验结果表明，Flexohand解决了现有机器人辅助手部康复设备的局限性。
