Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
Volume 29, Issue 1, Pages 236-250Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TRO.2012.2226381
Keywords
Axes misalignment; exoskeleton; kinematics; mechanism design; rehabilitation robotics; wearability
Categories
Funding
- European Union through the Wearable Interfaces for Hand Function Recovery Project (WAY project), FP7-ICT-Ch5 [288551]
- European Union through the CYBERnetic Lower-Limb Cognitive Ortho-prosthesis Project (CYBERLEGs project), FP7-ICT-Ch2 [287894]
- Italian Ministry of Economic Development through the AMULOS Project (ADVANCED MULOS) [MI01_00319]
- Regione Toscana under the Health Regional Research Programme Through the project EARLYREHAB
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The field of wearable robotics is gaining momentum thanks to its potential application in rehabilitation engineering, assistive robotics, and power augmentation. These devices are designed to be used in direct contact with the user to aid with movement or increase the power of specific skeletal joints. The design of the so-called physical human-robot interface is critical, since it determines not only the efficacy of the robot but the kinematic compatibility of the device with the human skeleton and the degree of adaptation to different anthropometries as well. Failing to deal with these problems causes misalignments between the robot and the user joint. Axes misalignment leads to the impossibility of controlling the torque effectively transmitted to the user joint and causes undesired loading forces on articulations and soft tissues. In this paper, we propose a general analytical method for the design of exoskeletons able to assist human joints without being subjected to misalignment effects. This method is based on a kinetostatic analysis of a coupled mechanism (robot-human skeleton) and can be applied in the design of self-aligning mechanisms. The method is exemplified in the design of an assistive robotic chain for a two-degree-of-freedom (DOF) human articulation.
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