Work

Design and evaluation of an actuated exoskeleton for examining motor control in stroke thumb

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: Advanced Robotics

DOI: 10.1080/01691864.2015.1105867

Authors: Furui Wang, Christopher L. Jones, Milind Shastri, Kai Qian, Derek G. Kamper, Nilanjan Sarkar

Institutions: Illinois Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt University, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab

Language: English

Topic: Prosthetics and Rehabilitation Robotics

Subfield: Biomedical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development