Design and Characterization of a Soft Rehabilitation Glove Structure to Optimize the Interaction Forces

The increasing use of rehabilitation robots has brought to the forefront the importance of safe and effective human-robot interaction. Soft rehabilitation gloves, due to their lightweight nature and better conformity to the human hand, have gained significant attention. However, optimizing the design of soft gloves to minimize patient discomfort remains a significant challenge. This study presents a systematic approach to optimize the design of a cable-driven soft rehabilitation glove to minimize the forces exerted on the patient's finger joints. In this process, a detailed kinematic analysis of a cable-driven glove finger is first performed, enabling the creation of a finger model to optimize the forces applied to its joints. By considering a desired configuration, using the gradient descent method to determine the cable tension, and evaluating various cable attachment points on the soft glove for internal force optimization, an optimized glove design is proposed for minimizing the force on the patient's joints. Results demonstrate a 43.65% reduction in internal forces exerted on the patient's joints when cables are attached at the optimized points compared to the initial reference design. This research contributes to developing more comfortable and practical soft rehabilitation gloves for patients.