External-Exoskeleton Design for Hand Rehabilitation Using Parallelogram Actuator

Individuals who survive a stroke often face mobility challenges. Currently, the rapid successful development of assisted robots has been commonly shown for limb support, however, the fingers and hand rehabilitation are still challenging due to the complicated mobilization mechanism. This paper presented a new external exoskeleton design with full function for hand rehabilitation with thumb and fingers directly driven by servo motors. The external exoskeleton was based on the hand ergonomic dimensions for adults and correlating coefficients of finger dimensions. Only one servo motor drives one finger of the exoskeleton which fully supported three joints including the metacarpophalangeal (MCP), proximal interphalangeal (PIP), and distal interphalangeal (DIP). Results presented the forces generation of the parallelogram actuated by servo motors capability applied for adult hand rehabilitation.