Paper Info
Title
Design and feasibility of the T-GRIP thumb exoskeleton to support the lateral pinch grasp of spinal cord injury patients
Abstract
Improving the impaired hand function of spinal cord injury patients with a robotic exoskeleton can highly impact their self-management, and ultimately their quality of life. In this paper the design and evaluation of a new, lightweight (50 gram) robotic thumb exoskeleton, called TGRIP, was presented that supports the lateral pinch grasp. The mechanism consists of a linear actuator that was mounted to the dorsal side of the hand, and a force transmission mechanism that flexes the thumb towards the side of the index finger. The thumb movement was controlled through contralateral wrist rotation. Experimental results from an evaluation with three spinal cord injury patients showed that the achieved grip force ( <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">~</sup> 7N) was higher and the overall performance during the Grasp and Release Test was better with the T-GRIP than without device. The device shows great potential for improving the hand function of patients with cervical spinal cord injury by actuating only a single degree of freedom.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/ICORR55369.2022.9896595
2022 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR)
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Exoskeleton Device,Feasibility Studies,Hand,Hand Strength,Humans,Quality of Life,Spinal Cord Injuries,Thumb
Conference
2022
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1945-7898
978-1-6654-8830-3
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
3
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Claudia J W Haarman100.34
Edsko E G Hekman200.34
Ellen M Maas300.34
Johan S Rietman400.34
Herman Van Der Kooij500.34