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

Abstract

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.