Abstract: Active exoskeletons have been widely investigated to supplement and restore human hand movements, but a significant limitation is that they have a complicated design requiring multi actuators. Single Degree-Of-Freedom (DOF) planar linkage mechanisms could be used with simple control. This research represents the design and optimization of a mechanism proposed for a finger exoskeleton bionic device. One DOF six-bar linkage Stephenson-II is selected, and a motion-generation mechanism synthesis problem is defined. The design is based on the data obtained from the flexion/extension motion of the index finger through 16 precision points and 16 angles for each phalange associated with the fingertip position. After explaining the kinematic analysis of the Stephenson-II, an evaluation of swarm intelligence techniques, including PSO, GWO, and ARO algorithms for solving optimization problems, is presented. ARO algorithm demonstrates the best performance among them. Moreover, the optimized mechanism in this study has a 50% error reduction compared to the one previously designed (Bataller et al. in Mech Mach Theory 105: 31–43, 2016).

Key words:  , Mechanism synthesis , · Bionic , · Finger exoskeleton , · PSO , · GWO , · ARO