Although autonomous robotic systems perform remarkably in structured environments (e.g., factories), integrated human–robotic systems are superior to any autonomous robotic systems in unstructured environments that demand significant adaptation. The technology associated with exoskeleton systems and human power augmentation can be divided into lower-extremity exoskeletons and upper-extremity exoskeletons. The reason for this was twofold; firstly, one could envision a great many applications for either a stand-alone loweror upper-extremity exoskeleton in the immediate future. Secondly, and more importantly for the division, is that these exoskeletons are in their early stages, and further research still needs to be conducted to ensure that the upper-extremity exoskeleton and lower-extremity exoskeleton can function well independently before one can venture an attempt to integrate them.

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The seven degree of freedom arm model is widely used in robotics, computer graphics, and much more. For wearable robotic systems, which are subject to joint limits, it is desirable to relate the joint limits to the redundantly of the system. A brief review of the arm model, redundant space and kinematics is presented. Following this review a closed form method is developed calculate the interval of the swivel angle (which characterizes the redundancy) that produces arm configurations that stay within joint limits.

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Nowadays, personal communication devices such as mobile phones are very popular all over the world. The success of mobile phones lies in the fact that interpersonal communication and interface is vital to the well-being of humans, and mobile phones help people achieve this goal by extending the sense of hearing and power of speech to far away places conveniently. However, apart from the auditory sense, humans also possess other senses for communication and interaction such as vision and body motion. These sensations play very important roles in our everyday interpersonal communication. In terms of technology, the state-of-the-art in sensing hardware, control software, telecommunication protocol, and computer networks has already allowed various forms of data to be transmitted and analyzed efficiently. So why can’t we find multimodal sensation communication commonplace among the mobile devices? We believe that the lack of efficient human–machine interfaces has caused a bottleneck. Therefore, we have designed and built a series of mobile devices that possess perceptual powers and communication capabili-ties and can support intelligent interactions. We call this novel class of devices intelligent wearable interfaces.

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This article presents the kinematic analysis and implementation of an interface and control of two robots-an exoskeleton master robot and a human-like slave robot with two arms. Two robots are designed and built to be used for motion-following tasks. The operator wears the exoskeleton master robot to generate motions, and the slave robot is required to follow after the motion of the master robot. To synchronize the motions of two robots, kinematic analysis is performed to correct the kinematic mismatch between two robots. Hardware implementation of interface and control is done to test motion-following tasks. Experiments are performed to confirm the feasibility of the motion-following tasks by two robots.

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This paper gives an overview of different robotic applications based on two compliant actuator technologies developed within the Robotics & Multibody Mechanics Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel: the Pleated Pneumatic Artificial Muscle (PPAM) and the Mechanically Adaptable Compliance and Controllable Equilibrium Position Actuator (MACCEPA). Both actuators have built-in intrin-sic compliance, which makes for two control parameters to be set, namely the equilibrium position of the actuated joint and the equivalent torsion spring stiffness. The increase of control complexity is countered by the added value of adaptable compliance. Compliant actuation, as opposed to conventional, stiff actuators like electrical drives, is currently growing in importance and has applications in a variety of robotic technologies where accurate trajectory tracking is not prevalent: bipedal walking robots, assistive technology, rehabilitation training. The current status of our research projects in compliant actuation and their future perspectives are presented.

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