Design of a Soft Robotic Glove for Hand Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients with Clenched Fist Deformity using Inflatable Plastic Actuators

In this paper, we present a soft robotic glove designed to augment hand rehabilitation for stroke patients with clenched fist deformity. The robotic glove provides active finger extension for hand rehabilitative training, through its embedded inflatable actuators that are fabricated by heat bonding of flexible plastic sheets. Upon pressurization, the actuators inflate, stiffen, and extend the fingers. The actuators were embedded in the finger pockets of a glove. In this work, the device was evaluated in terms of its extension torque on a hand model, a healthy subject and a stroke patient. Preliminary results showed that the device was able to generate significant torques to provide assistance in finger extension and hand opening on both healthy and stroke participants.

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