Development and implementation of a novel kinaesthetic hand exoskeleton system

In the new Industry 4.0 era, digitalization and automation are the turning points to address rapidly changing challenges, such as tackling the limited availability of resources and improving the efficiency and sustainability of the industry. The thrust of this movement has pointed to the essential importance of developing new technologies to collect, understand and use the enormous amount of data created. This revolutionary wave also took root in the healthcare industry, leading to the so-called \textit{Health 4.0}, based on smart machines to provide better, more value-added, and more efficient healthcare services to patients. This scenario made Robotics for Medicine and Healthcare products and innovative robot-augmented therapies a hot research topic. In this context, the research and development of an exoskeleton designed to enhance rehabilitation augmented with virtual reality applications have a potentially considerable social impact, representing cutting-edge technology. The presented work dwells well with the subject by describing the mechatronic design process of a kinaesthetic hand exoskeleton system meant to reproduce proprioceptive stimuli coming from the interaction with a virtual reality. The presented prototype is a modular device, equipped with force and pose sensors, and driven by a Bowden-cable-based remote actuation system. Unlike similar devices, the proposed exoskeleton is specifically thought for virtual reality interaction and is designed to be reversible while exerting up to 15 N per finger. For a more accurate rendering of kinaesthetic finger stimuli, a procedure for reconstructing HMI force as a function of measured force and position signals by employing a system's kinematic and dynamic model is presented, detailed, and followed by some preliminary tests. The results showed that the model can trace forces back to the end-effector with a good performance in replicating the force-profile trend and a percentage error of the force module between 1.2 and 15\%. Moreover, this work faced the design of the software architecture issue, along with a dedicated graphical user interface for real-time control and monitoring of the system, and a serious game to stimulate and train the sensorimotor apparatus necessary to perform the kinaesthetic gesture of spherical closing grasping. The main contribution of this activity is hence not only to propose a novel hand exoskeleton prototype for kinaesthetic and virtual reality purpose but also to provide a detailed explanation of its implementation into a real device.