Exoskeleton for Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients
While waiting for our parts to print, we explored the possibility of using the Annikken Andee U shield (https://www.annikken.com/andee-u) to control our motors. Using the shield, we are able to create widgets on our phone screen and connect to the
Now that we have more or less finished putting the exoskeleton together, we decided to move on with deciding where to place and secure the motor. We are currently working with the idea of placing the servo motors on our
In our previous post, we used stainless steel (from stainless steel cable ties) to create our snap-on rings. While it was functional as a ring, we felt that we could do better with a material that is slightly more rigid
Force Required In order to facilitate rehabilitation, an important function of our device is to open the hands of patients who experience spasticity. To do this, our device must be able to overcome the muscle tone in a spastic patient’s
Instead of using mechanical switches, we decided to use keyboard controls for further tests on our prototype. This is because we will be controlling 5 individual motors and it would be neater to use our keyboard input for control of
Moving on from our previous efforts to put the whole structure of the exoskeleton together, we changed the rings that were used to secure the ring to the fingers, which were previously too weak to hold the parts down and
In our very first assembly of the whole glove, the attachment of the glove was made possible using felt. The felt pieces were wrapped around the palm and wrist, and then clipped on using an elephant clip. However, we realised
With modifications made to the general slider design (described in the previous post), we decided to work on printing out the pieces for the rest of the fingers (middle, ring, thumb and pinky). Once that was done, we also tried
For a stroke patient with muscle spasticity, their hands are often clenched closed. Thus, to help with the unclenching of the fist, our device requires a string or cable that pulls and decreases in length to extend the fingers, and
After deciding on proceeding with the slider design and doing the necessary calculations, we printed out the first prototypes for the index finger of our hand. As the original design had an extra degree of freedom, this gave rise to