The interest of the scientific community in medical Robotics and rehabilitation Robotics is growing every year. Rehabilitation Robotics aims to apply robotic technology (sensors, actuators, control) to the rehabilitation and assistance of disabled people. Only some years ago developers were able to implement viable robotic systems to assist a person with a functional limitation. Thus, devices have been developed to assist mobility and the motor functions of the arms and legs, among others. Tremor is a movement disorder that has a great impact on the quality of life of people who suffer it, mainly to do specific tasks (Rocon et al., 2004). It can affect the head, face, jaw, voice or the upper and lower extremities. In particular, tremor that affects the upper limbs is of major interest, since it can be very disabling to lead an independent life. It is a symptom associated with some abnormal neurological condition or cerebral lesions and degenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, orthostatic tremor, cerebellar diseases, ethylic intoxication, among others.

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Robotics technology is expected to play an important role not only in industries, but also in welfare and medicine. A power-assist exoskeleton, which is directly attached to the human body and assist the motion in accordance with the user’s motion intension, is one of the most effective assist robots for the physically weak persons. A study of power-assist exoskeletons has been carried out for a long time (Mosher & Wendel, 1960). The power-assist exoskeletons, which are sometimes called as power suits, man amplifiers, man magnifiers, or power-assist systems, have been studied for the purpose of military, industry, or medial use (Cloud, 1965; Mosher, 1967; Vukobratovic, 1975; Kazerooni & Mahoney, 1991). Recently, many studies on powerassist robots have been carried out to help the motion of physically weak persons such as disabled, injured, and/or elderly persons in daily activities or rehabilitation (Nagai et al., 1998, Kiguchi et al., 2001-2007; Rosen et al., 2001; Tsagarkis & Caldwell, 2003; Sasaki et al., 2004).

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Humanoid robots are designed and built to bear similitude to humans. Ultimately, they are to resemble the sizes and physical abilities of humans in order to function in human-oriented environment and work autonomously but to pose no physical threat to humans. Humanoid robots need to exhibit artificial skin and facial expressions to create extremely lively human appearances. A humanoid robot that resembles human in its appearance and in its movement is built using powerful actuators paired with gear-trains and joint mechanisms, motor drivers that are all encased in a package no larger than that of the human physique. In this paper, I propose the construction of the humanoid-applicable anthropo-morphic 7-DoF arm completed with 8-DoF hand. A novel mechanical design of this humanoid arm makes it compact enough not only to be compatible with currently available narrating-model humanoids, but also powerful and flexible enough to be functional; the number of degrees of freedom endowed in this robotic arm is sufficient for executing a wide range of tasks including dexterous hand motions. The developed robotic arm is an interactive humanoid robot, with the safety feature actualized in both the software and hardware aspects. Software-wise, the humanoid arm adapts an algorithm to sense and interpret the incoming external force and escapes toward a safe direction. Hardware-wise, it is designed and built to be light and compliant to minimize shocks in case of a collision. The thesis covers the following:
— the development of the anthropomorphic arm and hand hardware for safe human interactions
— the development of an algorithm for detecting an external force input using inverse dynamics
— the development of safe escape algorithms without using the conventional multi-axis Force-Torque sen-sors, torque sensors or contact sensors.
Keywords: humanoid arm, humanoid hand, human robot interaction, interactive robots, safe robot arm, robot motion generation, humanoid robot.

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There are numerous causes that can affect the functioning of the human locomotor system, leading to the appearance of joint disorders in the lower limb and generating atypical gait patterns. The importance of research and development in assistance technologies to compensate patho-logical gait have been recognised since the beginning of the twentieth century and numerous challenges still lie ahead to make their clinical application a reality. In this section, GAIT, the lower-limb Wearable exoskeleton is presented, conceived as a compensation and evaluation system of pathological gait, for application in real conditions as a combined assistance and assessment methodology of the problems affecting mobility in individuals with neuromotor disorders. The main technological challenges are discussed with respect to sensing, actuation and control subsystems. Special emphasis is placed on advances in robotic lower-limb orthoses, and biomechanical requirements, structural design considerations and the approaches existing to develop robust real-time controllers for portable solutions with a common aim, human motor control, are analysed.

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In 2003, 700,000 persons in the United States suffered a cerebral vascular accident (CVA), or stroke, with the total number of survivors estimated at 5.5 million. The total cost for rehabilitation and lost revenue in 2006 was 57.9 billion (Thom, Haase et al. 2006). Stroke common-ly causes significant residual physical, cognitive, and psychological impairment (Gresham 1990). As the geriatric population increases and more effective therapies for acute stroke management emerge, there will be more survivors living with disabilities. In addition to greater numbers of survivors, there has been an increase in the number of more moderately affected survivors (Wolf, D’Agostino et al. 1992), which has increased the demand for stroke rehabilitation in an era of health care cost containment. Efforts to pre-vent stroke must, therefore, be balanced with pragmatic efforts to prevent disability and maximize quality of life for stroke survivors. Persons with hemiparesis following stroke constitute the largest group of patients receiving rehabilitation services in this country. The current consensus regarding rehabilitation of patients with some voluntary control over movements of the paretic limb is that they be encouraged to use the limb in functional tasks and receive training directed toward improving strength and motor control, relearning sensorimotor relationships, and improving functional performance (Gresham, Alexander et al. 1997). Given such recommendations, the research community has responded with efforts to improve the effectiveness of rehabilitative treatment of motor disability resulting from stroke.

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