Modelling, Simulation and Performance Validation of the Pneumatic Actuation System of a Rehabilitation Device of the Human Hand Joints

The passive mobilization of the hand joints by means of dedicated equipment accelerates patient recovery and decreases significantly the costs of therapy. For this reason, research and development of such equipment is essential. Important reductions in the development cycle duration of such equipment can be achieved by means of a specific technique known as Model-Based Design. Starting from these considerations, this paper puts forward a Model-Based Design approach to the study of a new concept of rehabilitation equipment of the hand joints actuated by a pneumatic muscle. The originality of the paper consists in the MATLAB-based rendering of the functional model of the rehabilitation equipment actuation system and in the presented simulation results. The purpose of this research was to obtain information concerning the behavior of the proposed system and to predict its performance prior to it being built physically. After simulation, the results are compared to the operational performance of the experimental model. The conclusion shows that the proposed operational model describes accurately the actual behavior of the system and can be used for future optimization of the rehabilitation equipment.