Motion Generation of Passive Slider Multiloop Wearable Hand Devices

Abstract

This paper describes a dimensional synthesis method used in the design of a passive finger exoskeleton that takes into account the user limb anthropometric dimensions and contact requirements for grasping objects. The paper is the first step in our current efforts on the design of wearable devices that use a common slider at the hand to passively drive each exofinger. The finger exoskeleton is comprised of a 3R serial limb and is constrained to multiloop eight-bar slider mechanism using two RR constraints. To design the exolimb, the pose of the limb was captured using an optical motion capture and its dimensions were determined using a constrained least square optimization, which takes into account human skin movement. To illustrate the generality of our approach, an example of the design of an index and middle finger exolimb is described.