SMA based wrist exoskeleton for rehabilitation therapy*

Abstract

This paper presents a rehabilitation wearable exoskeleton for wrist joint with two degrees of freedom (DOF), flexion-extension and adduction-abduction (radial and ulnar deviation), actuated with Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) based actuators. Thanks to this type of actuators, the proposed device presents a very light weight and noiseless operation, in comparison with similar devices. The preliminary results obtained over real tests with the wrist exoskeleton are presented. This prototype demonstrates that SMA actuator technology is a viable alternative when investigating possible improvement of rehabilitation robotic devices in terms of weight, size and cost.