The principal goal of this work is the development, testing and experimentation of a device for the hand rehabilitation. The system we designed is intended for people who have partially lost the ability to control correctly the hand musculature, for example after a stroke or a spinal cord injure. Based on EMG signals the system can «understand» the subject volition to move the hand and thanks to its actuators can help the fingers movement in order to perform the task. In this paper we describe the device and discuss the first results conducted on a healthy volunteer.

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This paper presents a new portable exoskeleton design for superior limbs by the CEA-LIST laboratories. The first model described here (4 axis) is designed to apply forces in 3 directions. The first application is foreseen as an assistance device to enable a disabled person to carry an object such as a teapot or water bottle. It is designed as a base for more complete systems. A partial realization of it is presented for the first time. The high potential of the actuators used both in terms of back drivability and force capacity, allows hybrid force-position control laws making it possible to cover a broad range of applications: rehabilitation, assistance, force feedback master arm for telerobotics, sport training, and a virtual reality workbench

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A wearable exoskeleton robot, Skil Mate, is a new concept that can assist skilled workers in power as well as in skill. Skil Mate is composed of servo mechanisms and haptic devices (tactile or slipping-off sensors/displays), so that it can follow the workers’ movement. Skil Mate is suitable for work in hazardous environments such as in space, under sea, etc. The goal of the project is to develop a prototype model of the wearable robot for a spacesuit, which consists of an upper torso assembly and a pair of arms with gloves

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Hand therapy is a major sector of physiotherapy and one of great importance. The impairment of the hand and generally of the upper limbs can be the cause of social and financial hardship and a serious cause of physical and emotional deterioration. Major efforts are directed into developing therapy methods and procedures in order to standardise and therefore successfully apply treatment regimes in a wide scale. Although, the lack of scientific measurements of statistical value that the current methods suffer due to the mostly empirical nature of examination, assessment and treatment does not assist this endeavour. This paper presents an exoskeleton based system for the physical and occupational therapy of the hand in an interactive VR environment. This system enhances the existing therapy methods with the introduction of accurate and repeatable finger motion and force measurement, interactivity, potential for great exercise assortment and statistical registration and evaluation.

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In order to offer a method for the rehabilitation of injured fingers and a means of quantitative detection and evaluation, an exoskeleton based continuous passive motion (CPM) machine is presented in this paper. Corresponding to each finger of human hand, the CPM machine has 4 degrees of freedom (DOF) driven by two DC motors. The joint force and position sensors are all integrated into the machine. The device can be easily attached and also be adjusted to fit different hand sizes. During the injured fingerpsilas flexion and extension motion the machine can always exert perpendicular forces on the finger phalanges, meanwhile it can achieve the precise control of scope, force and speed of the moving fingers. In order to control the CPM machine, we have also designed an embedded control system based on S3C2410 (a kind of 32-bit RISC microprocessor). The whole system is open-ended for new functions and applications. The function modularization method provides a new thinking of design for the control system.

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