A Wearable Finger Exoskeleton Based on the Crank-Rocker Mechanism for Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation of the grasp function of hands is critical for improving the quality of living for those who suffer from lost or weakened hand abilities due to neuromuscular disease. Current finger rehabilitation devices usually need a complex mechanical structure or a larger actuation system, which reduce the portability of the devices for daily living rehabilitation. In this work, we introduced the developing an ultra-light integrated modular finger exoskeleton that driven by a crank-rocker mechanism. The actuator for each joint is directly assembled at each joint by simplifying the structure design, which makes the device portable for patients. All of the parts are manufactured by 3D printing thus to reduce the initial moment of the whole device, the actuator we used is also the ultra-light server motor. The weight of the whole device is just about 60g (including 3 actuators). We analysised the kinematic of the exoskeleton, then a real-time embedded position tracking control algorithm is implemented on an Arduino board, which is used as the controller. Experimental results show that our device is capable of both positive and active training for finger habilitation.