Abstract
Soft exosuits are a promising solution for the assistance and augmentation of human motor abilities in the industrial field, where the use of more symbiotic wearable robots can avoid excessive worker fatigue and improve the quality of the work. One of the challenges in the design of soft exosuits is the choice of the right amount of softness to balance load transfer, ergonomics, and weight. This article presents a cable-driven based soft wrist exosuit for flexion assistance with the use of an ergonomic reinforced glove. The flexible and highly compliant three-dimensional (3D)-printed plastic structure that is sewn on the glove allows an optimal force transfer from the remotely located motor to the wrist articulation and to preserve a high level of comfort for the user during assistance. The device is shown to reduce fatigue and the muscular effort required for holding and lifting loads in healthy subjects for weights up to 3 kg.
Highlights
Exoskeletons are physical human-robot interfaces (HRIs) conceived for several purposes such as rehabilitation, assistance, and haptic interaction in virtual or remote environments (Pons, 2008)
We implemented a wrist exosuit whose main requirements are lightness, ergonomics, modularity, and effectiveness when working in parallel with human muscles
A key factor that drove our research was the evidence that a prominent contribution to the perceived discomfort comes from the localized pressure applied by non-ergonomic rigid supports on the human body
Summary
Exoskeletons are physical human-robot interfaces (HRIs) conceived for several purposes such as rehabilitation, assistance, and haptic interaction in virtual or remote environments (Pons, 2008). The same principles were translated into the rehabilitation and assistance field to aid functional substitution in patients suffering from motor disorders. In the past years, commercial solutions entered the market (Guizzo and Goldstein, 2005) to assist workers and reduce fatigue and musculoskeletal strain in burdensome and repetitive tasks (Kim et al, 2018). Available solutions include, among others, the Paexo by Ottobock, EksoVest by Ekso Bionics, MATE by Comau, and ShoulderX by SuitX. Most of the proposed solutions make use of a rigid kinematic structure parallel to the human one to allow the wearer’s motion, mainly because of the payload for which they are conceived. Rigid exoskeletons can introduce joint misalignment that causes discomfort, restrict movements, or, in the worst case, cause pain (Jarrassé and Morel, 2012)
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