Y.-m. Kim and I. Moon (Korea)
Upper-limb paralysis, rehabilitation device, artificialmuscle, and stroke patients
This paper proposes a wearable upper-limb rehabilitation device, DULEX, to increase the range of motion of the finger and wrist joint gradually. DULEX has three degrees of freedom for the wrist, the index finger, and a mechanism enclosing other three fingers except the thumb. The motion trajectory of DULEX is aligned to the user’s hand motion by using a parallel mechanism designed. The design parameters such as length and location of links are determined by kinematics analysis and an optimal technique. We use artificial air muscles to actuate each joint motion to reduce total weight. The motion angle of joint is indirectly estimated from muscle length controlled by air pressure. From experimental results, we show that DULEX is applicable to the upper-limb rehabilitation exercise.
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