Decoupled, wearable soft robotic rehabilitation device for the upper limb.

Abstract

Lightweight, adjustable, and affordable devices are needed to enable the next generation of effective, wearable adjuncts for rehabilitation. Used at home or in a rehabilitation setting, these devices have the potential to reduce compound pressures on hospitals and social care systems. Despite recent developments in soft wearable robots, many of these devices restrict the range of motion and lack quantitative assessment of moment transfer to the wearer. The decoupled design of our wearable device for upper-limb rehabilitation successfully delivers almost the full range of motion to the user, with a mean maximum flexion angle of 149° (SD = 8.5). In this article, for the first time, we show that in tests involving a wide range of participants, 82% of the moment produced by the actuator is applied to the wearer. This testing of elbow flexion moment transfer supports the effectiveness of the device. This research is a step toward effective pneumatic soft robotic wearable devices that are adaptable to a wide range of users - a necessary prerequisite for their widespread adoption in health care.