This paper presents a soft robotic glove designed to assist individuals with functional grasp pathologies in performing activities of daily living. The glove utilizes soft fabric-regulated pneumatic actuators that are low-profile and require lower pressure than previously developed actuators. They are able to support fingers and thumb motions during hand closure. Upon pressurization, the actuators are able to generate sufficient force to assist in hand closing and grasping during different manipulation tasks. In this work, experiments were conducted to evaluate the performances of the actuators as well as the glove in terms of its kinetic and kinematic assistance on a healthy participant. Additionally, surface electromyography and radio-frequency identification techniques were adopted to detect user intent to activate or deactivate the glove. Lastly, we present preliminary results of a healthy participant performing different manipulation tasks with the soft robotic glove controlled by surface electromyography and radio-frequency identification techniques.

In this paper, we present the design of a soft wearable exoskeleton that comprises of a glove embedded with pneumatic actuators of variable stiffness for hand assistive and rehabilitation application. The device is lightweight and easily wearable due to the usage of soft pneumatic actuators. A key feature of the device is the variable stiffness of the actuators at different localities that not only conform to the finger profile during actuation, but also provides customizability for different hand dimensions. The actuators can achieve different bending profiles with variable stiffness implemented at different localities. Therefore, the device is able to perform different hand therapy exercises such as full fist, straight fist, hook fist and table top. The device was characterized in terms of its range of motion and maximum force output. Experiments were conducted to examine the differences between active and passive actuation. The results showed that the device could achieve hand grasping and pinching with acceptable range of motion and force.