Xu Wenda, Guo Yunfei, Bravo Cesar, Ben-Tzvi Pinhas
Mechanical Engineering department in Virginia Tech.
Electrical and Computer Engineering department in Virginia Tech.
IEEE Trans Robot. 2023 Apr;39(2):1637-1652. doi: 10.1109/tro.2022.3220973. Epub 2022 Nov 23.
This paper presents the development of an exoskeleton glove system for people who suffer from brachial plexus injuries, aiming to assist their lost grasping functionality. The robotic system consists of a portable glove system and an embedded controller. The glove system consists of Linear Series Elastic Actuators (LSEA), Rotary Series Elastic Actuators (RSEA), and optimized finger linkages to provide imitated human motion to each finger and a coupled motion of the hand. The design principles and optimization strategies were investigated to balance functionality, portability, and stability. The model-based force control strategy compensated with a backlash model and model-free force control strategy are presented and compared. Results show that our proposed model-free control method achieves the goal of accurate force control. Finally, experiments were conducted with the prototype of the developed integrated exoskeleton glove system. Results from 3 subjects with 150 trials show that our proposed exoskeleton glove system has the potential to be used as a rehabilitation device for patients.
本文介绍了一种针对臂丛神经损伤患者的外骨骼手套系统的研发，旨在辅助恢复其丧失的抓握功能。该机器人系统由一个便携式手套系统和一个嵌入式控制器组成。手套系统由线性串联弹性驱动器（LSEA）、旋转串联弹性驱动器（RSEA）以及优化的手指连杆机构组成，可为每个手指提供模仿人类的运动以及手部的耦合运动。研究了设计原则和优化策略，以平衡功能性、便携性和稳定性。提出并比较了基于模型的力控制策略（采用间隙模型进行补偿）和无模型力控制策略。结果表明，我们提出的无模型控制方法实现了精确力控制的目标。最后，使用所开发的集成外骨骼手套系统的原型进行了实验。3名受试者进行150次试验的结果表明，我们提出的外骨骼手套系统有潜力用作患者的康复设备。
