Control Design and Testing for a Finger Exoskeleton Mechanism

This paper describes a control strategy for a linkage finger exoskeleton mechanism with two degrees of freedom. To characterise the performance of the proposed finger motion assistance device, a replica of a human finger is prototyped to mimic human finger motion and to the testing effect of assistance provided by the novel exoskeleton with results from grasp tests. A feasible control design is developed to achieve a robust grasp of an object using the proposed exoskeleton mechanism, which is validated with simulated and experimental results that show how the proposed control algorithm maintains the force within 3% of the desired value. The aim of the paper is to present a control design for the ExoFinger exoskeleton with low-cost easy operation features that are aligned with the similar characteristics of the mechanical design.