Kinematic Study of a Soft-and-Rigid Robotic Digit for Rehabilitation and Assistive Applications

This paper presents the kinematic study of a pneumatically actuated soft-and-rigid robotic digit designed to be used in exoskeleton-based hand rehabilitation and assistive applications. The soft-and-rigid robotic digit is comprised of three inflatable bellow-shaped structure sections (soft sections) and four semi-rigid sections in an alternating order which correspond to the anatomy of a human finger. The forward and backward bending motions at...