Development and Testing of a Low Cost Wearable and Portable Hand Exoskeleton Based on a Parallel Mechanism

In this research work, the authors developed and tested a low cost wearable and portable hand exoskeleton to assist people with physical disabilities in their everyday lives. Focusing on hand opening disabilities, the proposed actuated orthoses could support and enable daily gestures such as shacking hands or grasping objects. The Hand Exoskeleton System (HES) prototype is based on a cable-driven architecture applied to a single-phalanx mechanism. The preliminary prototype of the system has been successfully built and is currently under testing with a patient to verify its performance from a patient viewpoint.Copyright © 2015 by ASME