In order to realize haptic interaction (e.g., holding, pushing, and contacting the object) in virtual environment and mediated haptic communication with human beings (e.g., handshaking), the force feedback is required. Recently there has been a substantial need and interest in haptic displays, which can provide realistic and high fidelity physical interaction in virtual environment. The aim of our research is to implement wearable haptic displays for presentation of realistic feedback (kinesthetic stimulus) to the human arm. We developed wearable devices FlexTorque and FlexTensor that induce forces to the human arm and do not require holding any additional haptic interfaces in the human hand. It is a new technology for Virtual Reality that allows user to explore surroundings freely. The concept of Karate (empty hand) Haptics proposed by us is opposite to conventional interfaces (e.g., Wii Remote, SensAble’s PHANTOM, SPIDAR [1]) that require holding haptic interface in the hand, restricting thus the motion of the fingers in midair. The HapticEye interface allows the blind person to explore the unknown environment in a natural and effective manner. The wearer can literally see the environment by hand.

Категория: Ищем научные статьи | Нет комментариев »

Оказывается экзоскелету не обязательно иметь дополнительный источник энергии чтобы выполнять свои функции.Официальный сайт проекта.

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Категория: Skeletonics | 59 комментариев »

Невзирая на то, что компания NeuroSky обрела известность благодаря весьма прогрессивной сфере деятельности — нейроконтроллерам, то есть машинам, считывающим наши мысли, — продукты этой компании имели только игровое назначение. Ситуация изменится с новой машиной под названием MindWave, представленной на выставке DEMO Spring 2011.

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Категория: Управление | Нет комментариев »

This paper investigates the control algorithm of an exoskeleton for hand rehabilitation, which accomplishes both active and passive rehabilitation training. In the passive mode control the PID control algorithm is executed in the velocity mode of the driver. In the active mode control, control architecture is proposed to deal with in both free space and constraint space. A resistance compensation control method is proposed to reduce the resistance in free space which is caused by the friction of the Bowden cable as well as the moment of inertial. To realize the compensation, force sensors are used to measure the force exerted by the human fingertip. A commercial driver, which could switch between the two control modes by a programmable digital switch rather than changing the physical connection manually, guarantees the realization of the required functions. The experiments are conducted to verify the proposed method, and the results show that in the active control mode, the maximum finger-exerted force with compensation is about two fifths of the force without compensation which means the resistance is greatly reduced. And in the passive mode, the maximum joint position error is about 1.2 degree, which satisfies the requirement in hand rehabilitation application. The experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.

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Категория: Научные статьи | Нет комментариев »

For the human hand rehabilitation, the palmar opposition is an important function to evaluate the recovery of hand motor capabilities. This paper proposes an exoskeleton-type hand rehabilitation assistive device which is able to be applied to index finger as well as thumb. The kinematics and workspace of index fingertip and thumb-tip are analyzed. The `opposition space’ is defined as the intersection of the workspace of thumb-tip and the index fingertip. A metric, what we call `opposition degree’, which is defined as the ratio of volume of opposition space to that of the index fingertip workspace, is proposed to present the available degree of opposition. As an example, the opposition degree of a human hand model is determined. This metric can also used to rate the ergonomic performance of the hand rehabilitation assistive device. This method can be applied to other fingers as well. The opposition simulation experiment is conducted to verify the kinematics of the proposed exoskeleton.

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Категория: Научные статьи | Нет комментариев »