Design and experimental study of a flexible finger rehabilitation robot driven by shape memory alloy

Abstract The importance of hand function is evident in daily human life. However, different degrees of hand motor impairments after damage caused by stroke and other nervous system diseases bring great trouble to patients’ daily life. For this reason, a flexible finger rehabilitation robot driven by shape memory alloy wire was proposed in this paper and was equipped with a range extender of shape memory alloy wire wiring. The structural design was optimized by exploring the movement mechanism of the finger joint to achieve the requirement of imitating the normal motion function of the human finger. Based on the driving model of the finger rehabilitation robot, the prototype was made and tested, in which the total weight of the prototype is 393 g. When the drive voltage is 20 V, the maximum joint angle that the finger rehabilitation robot can achieve is about 85% of that of healthy people, in addition, it can help patients grasp most of the daily objects successfully, and can meet the basic requirements of finger rehabilitation.