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Design, modeling and control of an index finger exoskeleton for rehabilitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Hassan Talat ,
Hammad Munawar Open the ORCID record for Hammad Munawar [Opens in a new window] ,
Hamza Hussain  and
Usama Azam
Hassan Talat
Affiliation:
College of Aeronautical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
Hammad Munawar*
Affiliation:
College of Aeronautical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
Hamza Hussain
Affiliation:
College of Aeronautical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
Usama Azam
Affiliation:
College of Aeronautical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: h.munawar@cae.nust.edu.pk
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Abstract

With diverse areas of applications, wearable robotic exoskeleton devices have gained attention in the past decade. These devices cover one or more human limbs/joints and have been presented for rehabilitation, strength augmentation and interaction with virtual reality. This research is focused towards design, modeling and control of a novel series elastic actuation (SEA) based index finger exoskeleton with a targeted torque rendering capability of 0.3 Nm and a force control bandwidth of 3 Hz. The proposed design preserves the natural range of motion of the finger by incorporating five passive and two actively actuated joints and provides active control of metacarpophalangeal and proximal interphalangeal joints. Forward and inverse kinematics for both position and velocity have been solved using closed loop vector analysis by including human finger as an integral part of the system. For accurate force control, a cascaded control structure has been presented. Force controlled trajectories have been proposed to guide the finger along preprogrammed virtual paths. Such trajectories serve to gently guide the finger towards the correct rehabilitation protocol, thus acting as an effective replacement of intervention by a human therapist. Extensive computer simulations have been performed before fabricating a prototype and performing experimental validation. Results show accurate modeling and control of the proposed design.

Keywords

hapticfinger exoskeletonseries elastic actuationrehabilitation
Type
Research Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 40 , Issue 10 , October 2022 , pp. 3514 - 3538
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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