Design and Simulation of a Soft Robotic Device for Wrist Rehabilitation

Recently, soft robotics have become very popular in providing robot-assisted rehabilitation because of their compliant nature, which makes their interactions with human users safe. In task-specific rehabilitative exercises, several upper limb joints have to be mobile, but soft robotic exoskeletons have generally focused on hand rehabilitation. Soft pneumatic actuator (SPA) is a kind of soft robotic technique that enabling diverse and complex motion of the soft robotic devices. In this work, an assistive and portable soft robot has been designed and simulated for the rehabilitation of wrist in individuals suffering from wrist dysfunction. The robotic device uses soft actuators with molded elastomeric chambers and shell reinforcement plates which induce specific bending trajectories under pneumatic pressurizations. A kind of actuator with three different section-shapes -rectangle, trapezoid and arc-shaped-are simulated and compared, the efficiency of different section shape actuators used in wrist rehabilitation equipment is discussed.