Advisor:

Prof. Jaydev P. Desai (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Committee Members:

Prof. Omer Inan (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)

Prof. Boris Prilutsky (School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology)

Prof. Greg Sawicki (School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)

Prof. Aaron Young (School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)

Development of a Tendon-driven, Voice-controlled Soft Robotic Hand Exoskeleton

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a neurological disorder that occurs when the spinal cord experiences some type of trauma, such as blunt force or lesions. It is estimated that the prevalence of SCI in the United States is around 300,000 persons, with around 12,500 new SCI cases in North America each year with the majority of traumatic SCI occurring in males aged 16-30 years of age. The damage to the central nervous system caused by SCI results in the loss of sensory and motor function in the areas of the body innervated by the injured spinal cord section at or below the site of injury. Depending on whether an injury is complete or incomplete, the sensorimotor function loss may extend to all distal areas of the body as well. For example, an individual with a complete C-5 level of injury has function of the deltoid and biceps muscles but cannot directly control the hand and fingers; therefore, they require assistance in the majority of activities of daily living (ADL), which often require extensive dexterity in the fingers to complete. The focus of this work is to develop and evaluate a robotic system to improve hand and finger functionality during the performance of everyday tasks in individuals with hand dysfunction. A tendon-driven, voice-controlled soft robotic assistive hand exoskeleton is designed and developed with the purpose of providing active assistance to users during grasping and pinching motions. Each iteration of the exoskeleton was evaluated with phantom hand models or human participants to quantify system performance. To supplement the developed hand exoskeleton system, a self-sealing suction cup is developed and integrated into an exoskeleton system to explore alternate strategies for the manipulation of objects.