We developed straight style transfer equipment for a person with disabled legs. It realizes travel in a standing position even on uneven ground, standing-up motion from a chair, and ascending stairs. This equipment comprises three modules: a pair of elastic crutches, a powered lower extremity orthosis, and a pair of mobile platforms. We show the conceptual design of the equipment and the motion of each module. Cooperative operations using three modules are discussed through simulations. We verified travel in a standing position, including rotation, through experiments using prototypes of elastic crutches and mobile platforms.

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This article introduces an instrumented glove and its application for robotic and human-assisted material handling manipulators. In its simplest form, worn by an operator, the sensory glove measures the force the wearer imposes on any part of the material handling robot or the object being maneuvered by the material handling robot. This measured force is then transmitted as radio frequency (RF) signals to the controller of the material handling robot, which in turn maneuvers the load so that the human operator only needs to exert a small portion of the force, leaving the actuator of the system to provide the remaining force required. Therefore, the actuators of the material handling system add exertion only in response to the operator’s hand force on the material handling system, or on the object maneuvered by the robot. Our experimental glove has proven entirely effective in manipulating objects naturally similar to the way we manipulate objects manually without activating many switches and pushbuttons to command the device.

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We have developed a novel device to supply hydraulic power for anaerobic mobile robotic systems. This power source is capable of operation in environments with no oxygen, such as underwater and space. The design, unlike the internal combustion engine, produces power on demand, eliminating idling when there is no load on the system. Steam and oxygen are the only bypro-ducts of this power supply. This monopropellant-powered free piston hydraulic pump (FPHP) was designed as a human scale (1.0 to 3.0 kW) power supply. The FPHP utilizes high concentration hydrogen peroxide, which decomposes into hot gas when exposed to a catalyst, as the monopropellant energy source. Energy is extracted from the hydrogen peroxide and transferred directly to hydraulic fluid by expanding the hot de-composition gas in an integrated piston/cylinder arrangement. Based upon a specific power and specific energy analysis using a Ragone plot, the performance of the FPHP potentially exceeds that of a battery based hydraulic power supply for short operation times.

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We have been developing exoskeleton systems to assist the motion of physically weak NOU US such as elderly, disabled, and injured persons. The proposed exoske-letons are controlled basically based on the electromyogram (EMG) signals. Even though the EMG signals eontaln very important information, however, it is not very easy to predict the user’s upper-limb motion (elbow and shoulder motion) based on the EMG signals In real-time because of the dimculty in using the EMG signals as the controller input signals. In this paper, we propose a control method for a 3DOF exoskeleton system for hu-man upper-limb motion assist considerlug the effect of blarticular muscles.

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