手首駆動型装具におけるロボット調整可能な運動学が把持動作を容易にする
Robotically adjustable kinematics in a wrist-driven orthosis eases grasping across tasks
脊髄損傷者の手首駆動把持を支援する装具に連続的なロボットモーター支援を導入し、手首の自由度を高めることで、把持動作の難易度と主観的負担が軽減されることを示した。
著者: Erin Y. Chang, Andrew I. W. McPherson, Hannah S. Stuart
分類: cs.RO
原文アブストラクト
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.
