This paper presents an exoskeleton for the assist of forearm motion (elbow flexion-extension and forearm pronationsupination motion) in daily activity and rehabilitation. The exoskeleton is controlled based on the activation patterns of the electromyogram (EMG) signals of the patient’s muscles, which directly reflects the motion intention of the patient, in order to realize natural motion assist The sophisticated real-time neurofuzzy control method, in which the effect of a muscle common to both motions is taken into account, is proposed. The proposed control method enables the cooperative motion of elbow and forearm of the patient by learning the muscle activation patterns of each patient. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated by experiment.

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Robotics, Virtual Reality, Exoskeleton and Human Machine Interface are fields of growing interest and applications every day. Robotic systems have enormous potential to reduce human exposure to dangerous situations and/or increase human presence in remote locations. Most of industrial robots are usually controlled by a computer or micro controllers to perform systematic sequence of actions stored in its memory. Navigation of autonomous robots involves following trajectories generated by automatic motion planners. For non-autonomous systems, the robot’s trajectories are provided by the operator, either trajectories that are pre-set or fed in an on-line fashion, such as teleoperation. Teleoperation is widely used for the direct control of non-autonomous robots from a remote location. The objective of this paper is to facilitate the controlling process by using human-machine interface techniques instead of predefined limited actions in its memory; this is done in order to be able to control the robot arm remotely to discover the World Wide II mines that are still in the western desert of Egypt.

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Haptic rendering has the potential to increase the quality of human-computer interaction with virtual environment by accommodating the sense of touch. In this paper, a 7 DOF arm type exoskeleton device is designed and implemented. Human user can haptically interact with virtual environment by using this light-weight device. The principles of measuring user’s arm motions are presented, which include the dimensional mechanism. The motion of each joint of the proposed haptic device is nearly independent. The virtual contact force is also calculated in real time to meet the stringent requirement of real time haptic rendering. Experiments results show promising feasibility of the arm type exoskeleton device.

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In this paper we present a methodology to drive the end effector of a robotic manipulator, to which is attached a human hand, in order to follow the human’s intention of movement. This set-up is inspired from a neuro-robotics scenario in order to develop systems for restoring motor functionalities in injured and disabled people. Three typical tasks are considered, namely the robot not to interfere with the human’s motion, to assist a person with limited motion capabilities, and finally to be used from the subjects for rehabilitation reasons. The proposed controllers utilize a force control in two different ways, with inner position loop and with inner velocity loop. The derived controllers attempt to incorporate neuro-scientific models results. Also, stability and robust analysis is presented. The properties of the proposed methodology are verified through non-trivial computer simulations

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Exoskeletons are attracting a great attention as a new means of rehabilitation devices. In such applications, control algorithms of exoskeletons are often inspired by nature for natural and effective assistance for patients. In this paper, a control algorithm is inspired by aquatic therapy. Aquatic therapy has various benefits for rehabilitation processes based on useful properties of water, e.g. buoyancy and drag. However, realization of such effects is challenged by limitations in hardware, such as mechanical impedance or impreciseness of actuator forces. Therefore, the resistive forces generated by actuators, which cause serious discomfort to patients, are precisely modeled and compensated to realize the control algorithm inspired by aquatic therapy effectively. The proposed methods are implemented in SUBAR developed by Sogang University and verified by experiments.

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