Modeling and Measurement of Extension Torque of Rehabilitation Gloves Using Thin McKibben Muscles

Abstract

Rehabilitation gloves have recently attracted considerable attention since the number of patients increases and the number of medical personnel decrease in declining birth rates and rapidly aging society. Especially in the rehabilitation of spasticity, it is important that a large extension torque is generated by rehabilitation gloves in order to sufficiently extend fingers. Therefore, we have developed a soft and lightweight rehabilitation glove with thin McKibben muscles with sufficient extension force. In this paper, we modeled and measured the extension torque of the glove we have proposed. As a result, we achieved to generate several times the torque of a conventional rehabilitation glove.