A new type of soft pneumatic elbow

This paper studies a new rehabilitation equipment made of soft materials in medical field. Fisrt, only three simple sensors (barometric pressure sensor, bending sensor and force sensor) are used in a soft pneumatic elbow (SPE) system to measure the features of SPE. The bending sensor functions as detecting the relationship between barometric pressure and bending value. The force sensor functions as detecting the relationship between barometric pressure and supporting force. These relationships will make it easier to use SPE later. Furthermore, it is proved that SPE can be applied to the muscular segment of the human body, the electromyography (EMG) and root mean square (RMS) analysis are applied to the test. The feasibility of this method is illustrated by them.