In order to improve the comfort of flexible rehabilitation gloves and speed up the rehabilitation process, a clinical investigation on the comfort of flexible rehabilitation gloves was carried out. Four design elements, i.e. functionality, fabric construction, structural paraameters and visual perception, were realized affecting the comfort of the gloves. On this basis, an improved rehabilitation glove was developed with three types of soft robotic fingers were used for evaluation. On this platform, objective evaluations were carried out for finger bending strength, friction coefficient between fabric and skin, air permeability and moisture permeability of fabric. In parallel, two subjective evaluation experiments of contact comfort and structural ergonomics of glove fabric were carried out. It was found that the suitable working pressure of the rehabilitation glove ranges from 40 to 120 kPa. When the gloves were pressurized with 40 kPa, the maximum compression on the thumb, the little finger and the other fingers was 2.94 N, 1.77 N and 1.96 N, respectively, demonstrating a preliminary rehabilitation effect. Furthermore, the fabric contact comfort score was 6.63, which shows that the gloves were comfortable to wear. The gloves were found convenient to wear, not limiting the normal functions of fingers.
Template