Robotically adjustable kinematics in a wrist-driven orthosis eases grasping across tasks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Chang, Erin Y., McPherson, Andrew I. W., Stuart, Hannah S.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Chang, Erin Y.
McPherson, Andrew I. W.
Stuart, Hannah S.
author_facet Chang, Erin Y.
McPherson, Andrew I. W.
Stuart, Hannah S.
contents Without finger function, people with C5-7 spinal cord injury (SCI) regularly utilize wrist extension to passively close the fingers and thumb together for grasping. Wearable assistive grasping devices often focus on this familiar wrist-driven technique to provide additional support and amplify grasp force. Despite recent research advances in modernizing these tools, people with SCI often abandon such wearable assistive devices in the long term. We suspect that the wrist constraints imposed by such devices generate undesirable reach and grasp kinematics. Here we show that using continuous robotic motor assistance to give users more adaptability in their wrist posture prior to wrist-driven grasping reduces task difficulty and perceived exertion. Our results demonstrate that more free wrist mobility allows users to select comfortable and natural postures depending on task needs, which improves the versatility of the assistive grasping device for easier use across different hand poses in the arm's workspace. This behavior holds the potential to improve ease of use and desirability of future device designs through new modes of combining both body-power and robotic automation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_16095
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robotically adjustable kinematics in a wrist-driven orthosis eases grasping across tasks
Chang, Erin Y.
McPherson, Andrew I. W.
Stuart, Hannah S.
Robotics
Without finger function, people with C5-7 spinal cord injury (SCI) regularly utilize wrist extension to passively close the fingers and thumb together for grasping. Wearable assistive grasping devices often focus on this familiar wrist-driven technique to provide additional support and amplify grasp force. Despite recent research advances in modernizing these tools, people with SCI often abandon such wearable assistive devices in the long term. We suspect that the wrist constraints imposed by such devices generate undesirable reach and grasp kinematics. Here we show that using continuous robotic motor assistance to give users more adaptability in their wrist posture prior to wrist-driven grasping reduces task difficulty and perceived exertion. Our results demonstrate that more free wrist mobility allows users to select comfortable and natural postures depending on task needs, which improves the versatility of the assistive grasping device for easier use across different hand poses in the arm's workspace. This behavior holds the potential to improve ease of use and desirability of future device designs through new modes of combining both body-power and robotic automation.
title Robotically adjustable kinematics in a wrist-driven orthosis eases grasping across tasks
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16095