For elderly and or physically disabled people who have lost their body functioning of motions due to geriatric disorders, and/or disease processes including trauma, sports injuries, spinal cord injuries, occupational injuries, and strokes, we have been developing a 3 DOF mobile robotic exoskeleton for rehabilitation and for assisting motion of elbow and shoulder, since human shoulder and elbow motions are involved in a lot of activities of everyday life. The robotic exoskeleton is mainly activated and is controlled by the skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals, since EMG signals of muscles directly reflect how the user intends to move. This paper focused on the mechanism of mobile robotic exoskeleton and proposed passive and active assist mode of rehabilitation scheme in addition to assist daily upper-limb motion by the aid of robotic exoskeleton. The proportional derivative (PD) control has been applied to the controller for the passive mode of rehabilitation whereas neuro-fuzzy based biological controller is responsible for active assist mode of rehabilitation as well as to assist daily upper limb motion

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An upper limb robotic exoskeleton of three degrees of freedom (DOF) is designed for the patients who survived stroke and the elderly who have not enough strength to move their limbs freely. Particular attention is paid to the realization of a intention-driven robotic control approach, by which the robotic exoskeleton can assist the user moving his/her arm freely to where he/she intends to go. A force sensing system made of multiple force sensing resisters (FSRs) is embedded in the robotic exoskeleton. A static force model of the upper limb in a relaxed state is obtained when the user wears the exoskeleton. A hybrid model is proposed to describe the behavior modes of human upper limb motion. Filtering technology is designed to infer the intended moving direction of upper limb based on the measured force information and the static force model. The motion intention of user’s upper limb can be online estimated using the filter and a mode transition detector. Guided by the inferred intention, an admittance control strategy is assumed to control the motors of each DOF. The effectiveness of proposed robotic system and control approaches is evaluated by experiments.

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Exoskeleton suit is a typical human-machine system. Control the exoskeleton suit to track the pilot’s moving trajectory as well as to minimize the human-machine interaction force. The suit will help decrease the pilot’s power consumption and assist the pilot to carry heavy load. Impedance control was introduced to the control of exoskeleton suit. As the control laws that based on the dynamic model without model uncertainty compensation will increase the human-machine force, a RBF neural network with adaptive learning algorithm was used to compensate the model uncertainty. The stability analysis of the control law was given and the simulation results show the feasibility and validity of the proposed control law.

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EXOSTATION is a project aiming at building a complete haptic control station, which allows the operator wearing an exoskeleton-based haptic interface for the human arm to remotely control a virtual slave robot. This paper briefly describes the various components : the Sensoric Arm Master (SAM), a portable haptic exoskeleton, the Exoskeleton COntroller (ECO), the slave simulator, simulating an anthropomorphic manipulator and a 3D visualisation client. Several teleoperation control strategies (impedance, hybrid control, 3-channel) have been tested and compared in order to evaluate their performances. The last has shown the best behavior in term of haptic feedback. Finally, a focus is made on the application, and how various manipulation and operation tasks can be performed to assess the system’s performances (contact wall, objects manipulation, screwing). Users who tested the system were very impressed by the easiness of operation with the exoskeleton and felt the advantages of a force feedback information.

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Many people suffer from diseases that impair muscle function, resulting in decreased hand strength and a significant reduction in hand function. The objective of this project is to design and fabricate a powered exoskeleton that assists hand function and reduces the amount of muscular force needed to pinch and grasp. This device will be portable and easily manufactured, consisting of four major sub-systems: a mechanical exoskeleton, forearm support structure, biofeedback sensor array, and motor control system. The exoskeleton will be comprised of aluminum bands incorporated into a tight fitting glove. The mechanical exoskeletonwill be actuated using braided polymer cables attached to three linear actuators via a simple pulley system that connects the most distal finger bands to the motors. The control system of the hand will incorporate a microcontroller that is coded to integrate data from the finger tip sensors to actuate the motors. A light weight, portable battery will be utilized as the power supply.

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