In terms of upper extremity disabilities, the Americans with Disabilities 2010 report found that 6.7 million people reported difficulty grasping objects like a glass or pencil. These disabilities are a result of a wide variety of conditions (e.g. traumatic injury, stroke, cerebral palsy, burns and arthritis) and in nearly all cases rehabilitation therapy is desirable in order to improve motor function. This CAREER Award proposes to develop a soft wearable robot that can be used for hand rehabilitation. Compared to conventional therapy, this technology will enable more controlled and automated therapy by allowing precise control over the motions and forces that are applied to the fingers and thumb. The use of soft robotics offers advantages over traditional robotics and this work focuses on the development of a soft wearable actuated glove and embedded sensor system, which addresses some of the known challenges in implementing such a system with traditional rigid robotic components (i.e. alignment, weight). Additionally, the sensors embedded in the device will enable control over the assistance applied to the wearer and additionally, monitoring of the activities for the therapist. Present occupational and therapy is inherently expensive and the dosage (or number of visits) for patients is limited. With effective wearable robotic systems that can be used in the clinic and home, more frequent but shorter and more focused therapy may increase the speed of patient recovery and positively impact the productivity of therapists.
This CAREER Award proposes to shift the paradigm of rehabilitation from one where the therapist manipulates the fingers and thumb through some range of motion, to one where a lightweight, comfortable and soft robotic glove can provide high dose rehabilitation in either a continuous passive motion mode or in a functional assistance mode. This will be achieved through new soft actuators with integrated sensors that can comfortably apply forces to the wearer and integrated functional prototypes that will be evaluated on patients in collaboration with clinical partners. This work will advance soft actuator designs that are mechanically programmed to match the complex motions of the human fingers and thumb. This will be achieved by creating anisotropy in the bulk material properties enabling combinations of contraction, extension, bending and twisting to be achieved. These actuators are of interest to the community because they are lightweight, inexpensive, and capable of complex functionality. Low-level closed-loop controllers will be implemented on individual actuators to control their position and the force they apply and in addition different control strategies for intuitive human-robot interaction will be explored. Patients and therapists will be involved at all stages of the project and pilot studies on patients will be performed to demonstrate the potential of this technology.
