A Novel Soft Glove Utilizing Honeycomb Pneumatic Actuators (HPAs) for Assisting Activities of Daily Living

Fabric-based pneumatic actuators (FPAs) are extensively employed in the design of lightweight and compliant soft wearable assistive gloves. However, conventional FPAs typically exhibit limited output force, thereby restricting the applications of such gloves. This paper presents the development of a novel honeycomb pneumatic actuator (HPA) constructed using flexible thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) coating through hot pressing or ultrasonic welding techniques. Compared to the previously utilized double-layer fabric-based pneumatic actuators (DLFPAs), the HPAs yields a remarkable 862% increase in end output force. It can produce a tip force of 13.57 N at a pressure of 150 kPa. The integration of HPAs onto a soft pneumatic glove enables the facilitation of various activities of daily living. A series of trials involving nine patients were conducted to assess the effectiveness of the soft glove. The experimental results indicate that when assisted by the glove, the patients' finger metacarpophalangeal (MCP) and proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joints achieved angles of 87.67 ± 19.27° and 64.2 ± 30.66°, respectively. Additionally, the average fingertip force reached 10.16 ± 4.24 N, the average grip force reached 26.04 ± 15.08 N, and the completion rate of daily functions for the patients increased from 39% to 76%. These outcomes demonstrate that the soft glove effectively aids in finger movements and significantly enhances the patients' daily functioning.

A Critical Review on Factors Affecting the User Adoption of Wearable and Soft Robotics

In recent years, the advent of soft robotics has changed the landscape of wearable technologies. Soft robots are highly compliant and malleable, thus ensuring safe human-machine interactions. To date, a wide variety of actuation mechanisms have been studied and adopted into a multitude of soft wearables for use in clinical practice, such as assistive devices and rehabilitation modalities. Much research effort has been put into improving their technical performance and establishing the ideal indications for which rigid exoskeletons would play a limited role. However, despite having achieved many feats over the past decade, soft wearable technologies have not been extensively investigated from the perspective of user adoption. Most scholarly reviews of soft wearables have focused on the perspective of service providers such as developers, manufacturers, or clinicians, but few have scrutinized the factors affecting adoption and user experience. Hence, this would pose a good opportunity to gain insight into the current practice of soft robotics from a user's perspective. This review aims to provide a broad overview of the different types of soft wearables and identify the factors that hinder the adoption of soft robotics. In this paper, a systematic literature search using terms such as "soft", "robot", "wearable", and "exoskeleton" was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines to include peer-reviewed publications between 2012 and 2022. The soft robotics were classified according to their actuation mechanisms into motor-driven tendon cables, pneumatics, hydraulics, shape memory alloys, and polyvinyl chloride muscles, and their pros and cons were discussed. The identified factors affecting user adoption include design, availability of materials, durability, modeling and control, artificial intelligence augmentation, standardized evaluation criteria, public perception related to perceived utility, ease of use, and aesthetics. The critical areas for improvement and future research directions to increase adoption of soft wearables have also been highlighted.

A Versatile Continuum Gripping Robot with a Concealable Gripper

Continuum robots with their inherent compliance provide the potential for crossing narrow unstructured workspace and safely grasping various objects. However, the display gripper increases the size of the robots, and therefore, it tends to get stuck in constrained environments. This paper proposes a versatile continuum grasping robot (CGR) with a concealable gripper. The CGR can capture large objects with respect to the robot’s scale using the continuum manipulator and can grasp various objects using the end concealable gripper especially in narrow and unstructured workspaces. To perform the cooperative operation of the concealable gripper and the continuum manipulator, a global kinematic model based on screw theory and a motion planning approach referred to as “multi-node synergy method” for the CGR are presented. The simulation and experimental results show that objects of different shapes and sizes can be captured by the same CGR even in complex and narrow environments. Finally, in the future, the CGR is expected to serve for satellite capture in harsh space environments such as high vacuum, strong radiation, and extreme temperatures.

Rehabilitation of motor function after stroke: A bibliometric analysis of global research from 2004 to 2022

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

The mortality rate of stroke has been increasing worldwide. Poststroke somatic dysfunctions are common. Motor function rehabilitation of patients with such somatic dysfunctions enhances the quality of life and has long been the primary practice to achieve functional recovery. In this regard, we aimed to delineate the new trends and frontiers in stroke motor function rehabilitation literature published from 2004 to 2022 using a bibliometric software.

METHODS

All documents related to stroke rehabilitation and published from 2004 to 2022 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. Publication output, research categories, countries/institutions, authors/cocited authors, journals/cocited journals, cocited references, and keywords were assessed using VOSviewer v.1.6.15.0 and CiteSpace version 5.8. The cocitation map was plotted according to the analysis results to intuitively observe the research hotspots.

RESULTS

Overall, 3,302 articles were retrieved from 78 countries or regions and 564 institutions. Over time, the publication outputs increased annually. In terms of national contribution, the United States published the most papers, followed by China, Japan, South Korea, and Canada. Yeungnam University had the most articles among all institutions, followed by Emory University, Fudan University, and National Taiwan University. Jang Sung Ho and Wolf S.L. were the most productive (56 published articles) and influential (cited 1,121 times) authors, respectively. "Effect of constraint-induced movement therapy on upper extremity function 3-9 months after stroke: the Extremity Constraint Induced Therapy Evaluation randomized clinical trial" was the most frequently cited reference. Analysis of keywords showed that upper limbs, Fugl-Meyer assessment, electromyography, virtual reality, telerehabilitation, exoskeleton, and brain-computer interface were the research development trends and focus areas for this topic.

CONCLUSION

Publications regarding motor function rehabilitation following stroke are likely to continuously increase. Research on virtual reality, telemedicine, electroacupuncture, the brain-computer interface, and rehabilitation robots has attracted increasing attention, with these topics becoming the hotspots of present research and the trends of future research.