Arm Movement Recorder

Abstract

Problem statement: Human arm movement is widely studied nowadays. Some movements of arm are performed frequently in everyday life. Devices that can record the path of movement are important in studying human arm gesture. Approach: This project was performed the five degree-of-freedom exoskeleton that was designed and constructed to observe position and orientation values of various movement in x-y-z coordinates of human arm. All joints of the exoskeleton were attached with potentiometers for tracking a human arm trajectory. A dedicated computer with a software application, LabVIEW, obtained the data from arm movement and translated to the end effector coordinate. A calibration method for the exoskeleton was proposed for a particular path, a circle. A value correction for the chosen path was introduced in this calibration process and error of root mean square was used as performance index to measure radial error and geometric error of the exoskeleton. Results: Experiments with a human arm for executing repetitive tasks were performed to study. There were two sets of experiments. With correction factor applied to both experiments, the average Error of Root Mean Square (ERMS) reduced drastically. Conclusion: With the correction factor, this device could use to record particaular movement of human's arm with small error.