The novel design of a three-degree of freedom (DOF) parallel robotic structured hip exoskeleton is introduced in this research. Anexoskeleton for walking typically is developed as an auxiliary mechanism which is used for the entire leg. This paper presents a biomimetic parallel manipulator which is only for the hip. An exhaustive mobility analysis and inverse kinematic solutions are derived in closed form, and the Jacobian matrix is derived analytically based on a primary prototype. These kinematic analyses verified the structure of the CAD design.

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The human lower extremity exoskeleton (HLEE) conceived and designed to provide human the ability to carry heavy loads on his back with minimal effort over type of rugged terrain, which integrated human-robotic system under the control of the human. Based on bionics, HLEE structure was analyzed and designed. Mathematical models of human typical gait were built. The Virtual prototype of the human and the Lower Extremity Exoskeleton were produced using Pro/e three-dimensional modeling software and ADAMS kinematic modeling package. Trajectory of human motion was programmed using the cubic spline interpolation. The accuracy and the assumptions feasibility of the model were proven by simulation.

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Fixed-Base Exoskeleton applications have increased rapidly in the last few years, evidently as part of promising rehabilitation robotic programs of the robotics worldwide community, where in particular Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) plays an important role in its design and control because they are tightly coupled to human-limbs. Exoskeletons embrace HRI as well as technological and theoretical challenges towards real and effective rehabilitation. In this realm, some questions arise, to name a few, what is the relationship between the exchanged energy between human and exoskeleton? How can we assess rehabilitation factors under HRI philosophy? This paper attempts to establish answers to these questions, which can be embodied into rehabilitation HRI using a Light-Exoskeleton. A compliant haptic guidance scheme for human arm subject to minimum-jerk-trajectories criterion is proposed. Preliminary experimental results provide further insight of a haptic guidance scheme taking into account decisive factors into the HRI such as human pose, haptic guidance control, reaching and tracking tasks, the complexity of the virtual environment, and muscles activity.

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An exoskeleton has to be lightweight, compliant, yet powerful to fulfill the demanding task of walking. This imposes a great challenge for the actuator design. Electric motors, by far the most common actuator in robotic, orthotic, and prosthetic devices, cannot provide sufficiently high peak and average power and force/torque output, and they normally require high-ratio, heavy reducer to produce the speeds and high torques needed for human locomotion. Studies on the human muscle-tendon system have shown that muscles (including tendons and ligaments) function as a spring, and by storing energy and releasing it at a proper moment, locomotion becomes more energy efficient. Inspired by the muscle behavior, we propose a novel actuation strategy forexoskeleton design. In this paper, the collected gait data are analyzed to identify the spring property of the human muscle-tendon system. Theoretical optimization results show that adding parallel springs can reduce the peak torque by 66%, 53%, and 48% for hip flexion/extension (F/E), hip abduction/adduction (A/A), and ankle dorsi/plantar flexion (D/PF), respectively, and the rms power by 50%, 45%, and 61%, respectively. Adding a series spring (forming a Series Elastic Actuator, SEA) reduces the peak power by 79% for ankle D/PF, and by 60% for hip A/A. A SEA does not reduce the peak power demand at other joints. The optimization approach can be used for designing other wearable robots as well.

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This paper develops a novel system which includes an exoskeleton upper-limb robot and an inertia motion unit (IMU) measurement system based on mirror therapy concepts with assistive robotics. By integrating the IMU measurement system and the exoskeleton robot, we can execute measurement and control over larger range of motion (ROM) and also improve the safety and user-friendliness of the system. In this paper, two methods using IMU to measure various orientations of parts of the master-side’s upper-limb have been proposed, and then the posture trajectory of the disabled part of the slave’s side will be automatically generated. Conceivably, these two methods can create more complex trajectories than conventional approaches which design specific type of trajectories. Besides that, the accuracy and safety of orientation measurement are very important issues when robot-assisted exercises are conducted. To achieve this objective, we particularly develop a point-to-point control system consisting of two different types of position measurement components along with a PID controller, and both monitor each other to make the system more robust and to prevent the single point of failure problem while the system is working.

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