Joint Stiffness Compensation for Application in the EXTEND Hand Orthosis

This paper presents a passive hand orthosis, called EXTEND, that can be used during activities of daily living. In the design a negative stiffness spring mechanism is incorporated to overcome the high finger joint stiffness of stroke patients with hypertonia. The passive mechanism can be easily tune...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2018 7th IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (Biorob) pp. 677 - 682
Main Authors Haarman, Claudia J.W., Hekman, Edsko E.G., Prange, Gerdienke B., van der Kooij, Herman
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.08.2018
Subjects
Exoskeletons
Muscles
Prototypes
Springs
Task analysis
Thumb
Torque
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Summary:This paper presents a passive hand orthosis, called EXTEND, that can be used during activities of daily living. In the design a negative stiffness spring mechanism is incorporated to overcome the high finger joint stiffness of stroke patients with hypertonia. The passive mechanism can be easily tuned by the user to compensate a linear joint stiffness of 0.15 to 0.33 Nm/rad for each finger independently. A prototype was tested with four patients showing an increased functional ability of the hand during several tasks. With the orthosis, patients were better able to pick up mid-sized objects (5-7.5cm diameter) of different shapes.
ISSN:2155-1782
DOI:10.1109/BIOROB.2018.8487208