Mechanical design of a gravity-balancing wearable exoskeleton for the motion enhancement of human upper limb
Hsiang-Chien Hsieh, Li Chien, Chao-Chieh Lan
Abstract
Powered exoskeletons can provide motion enhancement for both healthy and physically challenged people. Upper limb exoskeletons are required to have multiple degrees-of-freedom and can still produce sufficient force to augment the upper limb motion. The design using serial mechanisms usually results in a complicated and bulky exoskeleton that prevents itself from being wearable. This paper presents a new exoskeleton design aimed to achieve compactness and wearability. We consider a shoulder exoskeleton that consists of a parallel spherical mechanism with two slider crank mechanisms. The actuators can be placed on a stationary platform and attached closely to human body. Thus a better inertia property can be obtained while maintaining lightweight. Through the use of a gravity-balancing mechanism, the required actuator power becomes smaller and with better efficiency. A static model is developed to analyze and optimize the exoskeleton. Through illustrations of a prototype, the exoskeleton is shown to be wearable and can provide adequate motion enhancement of a human's upper limb.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2015_mechanicaldesign,
title = {Mechanical design of a gravity-balancing wearable exoskeleton for the motion enhancement of human upper limb},
author = {Hsiang-Chien Hsieh and Li Chien and Chao-Chieh Lan},
booktitle = {ICRA 2015},
year = {2015}
}