Fuzzy PID control of a wearable rehabilitation robotic hand driven by pneumatic muscles

Intensive task-oriented repetitive physical therapies need be provided by individualized interaction between the patients and the rehabilitation specialists to improve hand motor performance for those survived from stroke and traumatic brain injury. The goal of this research is to develop a novel wearable device for robotic assisted hand repetitive therapy. We designed a pneumatic muscle (PM) driven therapeutic device that is wearable and provides assistive forces required for grasping and finger extension. The robot has two distinct degrees of freedom at the thumb and all other fingers. The embedded sensors can feedback position and force information for robot control and quantitative evaluation of task performance. It is potential of providing supplemental at-home therapy in addition to in the clinic treatment. To realize the trajectory tracking control, a fuzzy PID controller is designed for the proposed device. The experimental results show angle tracking control of the robotic hand using the fuzzy PID controller has better performance than that using a conventional PID controller.