Brain-controlled soft robotic glove for post-stroke hand exercise

Abstract

Stroke is one of the most prevalent and the first leading cause of disability disease leaving the survivors with severe motor function impairment and tremendous influence on life independence. The number of stroke survivors was observed an integral growth in recent decades with increasing number of new patients and very little progress in chronic survivors. Loss of hand dexterity severely affected the activities of daily living. Although received hand function rehabilitation, the outcome was not obvious especially for stroke patients in chronic stage. The main reasons that slowed down the hand rehabilitation progress were the shortage of resources in hospital, the inconvenience in reaching rehab center and the unsatisfied training outcomes in chronic stage. Home rehab had high requirement for intelligence and safety of the devices. Thus, a soft robot system with user intention detection was a best solution. The soft structure provided absolute safety; accurate user intension detection ensured the intelligence of the system making it suitable for patients with various degrees of function impairment; robot actuators increase the intensity of repetitive training avoiding manpower fatigue. In this study we established a brain controlled soft robotic system for hand rehabilitation. The device enables to detect user’s intention and produce maximum hand mobility. We conducted the study through completing three objectives: simulation analysis and optimization of the soft bellow actuator, establishment of the brain controlled soft robotic system, clinical evaluation the feasibility of the intelligent soft robotic system in stroke hand function rehabilitation. The improvement in clinical evaluation validated the feasibility of the brain controlled soft robotic system in hand function training.