Abstract
Exoskeletons arise as the common ground between robotics and biomechanics, where rehabilitation is the main field in which these two disciplines find cohesion. One of the most relevant challenges in upper limb exoskeleton design relies in the high complexity of the human shoulder, where current devices implement elaborate systems only to emulate the drifting center of rotation of the shoulder joint. This paper proposes the use of 3D scanning vision technologies to ease the design process and its implementation on a variety of subjects, while a motion tracking system based on vision technologies is applied to assess the exoskeleton reachable workspace compared with an asymptomatic subject. Furthermore, the anatomic fitting index is proposed, which compares the anatomic workspace of the user with the exoskeleton workspace and provides insight into its features. This work proposes an exoskeleton architecture that considers the clavicle motion over the coronal plane whose workspace is determined by substituting the direct kinematics model with the dimensional parameters of the user. Simulations and numerical examples are used to validate the analytical results and to conciliate the experimental results provided by the vision tracking system.
Highlights
Automated manufacturing has boosted productivity and improved the workers’ quality of life in the past decades
Joint complexity and the dimensional variability between individuals limit the effectiveness of industrial robot architectures, and new exoskeleton designs have been proposed in the past years to tackle these challenges [3,4,5]
This paper presents a method to evaluate exoskeleton performance by means of reachable workspace comparison, where the proposed anatomic fitting index assess the compatibility of the exoskeleton and the human biomechanics of different gross motion tasks
Summary
Automated manufacturing has boosted productivity and improved the workers’ quality of life in the past decades. Robotic advancements have closed this gap by adding safety features and improving robot sensory awareness. Exoskeletons represent the epitome of these two trends and the final blending between human and machine, a mechanism whose joints and links correspond to those of the human body and mimic the user movements [1]. Exoskeletons were based on industrial robot architectures, adopting similar actuators, mechanisms, and materials [2]. This approach, is suboptimal for exoskeletons that try to mimic the human body mobility. Joint complexity and the dimensional variability between individuals limit the effectiveness of industrial robot architectures, and new exoskeleton designs have been proposed in the past years to tackle these challenges [3,4,5]
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