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Compliant Finger Exoskeleton with Telescoping Super-elastic Transmissions

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Abstract

This paper presents the concept, design, and experimental characterization of a compliant finger exoskeleton with telescoping super-elastic transmissions. Nickel-Titanium (Ni-Ti) rods with the super-elastic feature are adopted as transmission components for the concentric telescoping mechanism to be flexible and safe. The mechanism of this finger exoskeleton is characterized in detail, including the finger connector, the elastic-rod transmission system (ERTS), and the actuator. The performance of compliance is demonstrated by finite element analysis. Then, the finger motion mapping relationship is captured by the experiments for a two-finger prototype. Experiment results show that certain compliance (e.g., 16∘/2N for the flexion/extension motion of the index finger) can be achieved by the Ni-Ti rods, and reflects in the assisted motion.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Singapore Academic Research Fund under Grant R-397-000-297-114, Singapore MOE Tier-1 Academic Research Fund entitled HENA: Hydrogel-matrix expedited nitinol actuation awarded to Dr. Hongliang Ren. We would like to thank Chan Yun Hol and William Hartley for their enthusiastic help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Changsheng Li, Yusheng Yan & Hongliang Ren

  2. College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, China

    Yusheng Yan

  3. NUS (Suzhou) Research Institute (NUSRI), Suzhou, 215123, China

    Hongliang Ren

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  1. Changsheng Li
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Correspondence to Hongliang Ren.

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Li, C., Yan, Y. & Ren, H. Compliant Finger Exoskeleton with Telescoping Super-elastic Transmissions. J Intell Robot Syst 100, 435–444 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-020-01186-0

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