Design, Modeling, and Testing of a Soft Pneumatic Glove With Segmented PneuNets Bending Actuators

This paper presents the design, modeling, and testing of a soft pneumatic glove with five segmented PneuNets bending actuators (SPBAs) made of elastomer, each actuator driving the corresponding finger to bend. The segmented structure of the actuator is designed according to the anatomy of human fing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE/ASME transactions on mechatronics 2019-06, Vol.24 (3), p.990-1001
Main Authors: Wang, Jiangbei, Fei, Yanqiong, Pang, Wu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuators
Bladder
Chambers
Computer simulation
Design
Elastomers
Euler-Lagrange equation
Finger jointing
Fingers
finite element methods
Force
Grasping
Grasping (robotics)
Grasping force
Inflatable structures
Mathematical model
Modelling
pneumatic systems
Rehabilitation
robot kinematics
Segments
Testing
Thumb
Tightness
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Summary:This paper presents the design, modeling, and testing of a soft pneumatic glove with five segmented PneuNets bending actuators (SPBAs) made of elastomer, each actuator driving the corresponding finger to bend. The segmented structure of the actuator is designed according to the anatomy of human fingers, i.e., three flexible segments for finger joints and four inflexible segments for finger metacarpal and phalanges, which makes the actuator fit with finger better than those of homogenous structure. The number of inflatable chambers in the flexible segment can be designed according to range of motion (ROM) of the corresponding joint. To improve the air tightness of the actuator, an inner bladder is embedded into chambers. To predict the passive bending degree and grasping force of human fingers driven by the glove, a bottom-up model is constructed by using Yeoh's theory of hyperelasticity and Lagrange equations of serial robots. The model is verified by FEM simulations and experiments simultaneously. At last, some passive exercises are presented, which indicates its potential in hand rehabilitation.
ISSN:1083-4435
1941-014X
DOI:10.1109/TMECH.2019.2911992