Paper Info
Title
"Soft" Exoskeletons For Upper And Lower Body Rehabilitation - Design, Control And Testing
Abstract
The basic concepts for exoskeletal systems have been suggested for some time with applications ranging from construction, manufacturing and mining to rescue and emergency services. In recent years, research has been driven by possible uses in medical/ rehabilitation and military applications. Yet there are still significant barriers to the effective use and exploitation of this technology. Among the most pertinent of these factors is the power and actuation system and its impact of control, strength, speed and, perhaps most critically, safety. This work describes the design, construction and testing of an ultra low-mass, full-body exoskeleton system having seven degrees of freedom (DOFs) for the upper limbs and five degrees of freedom (DOFs) for each of the lower limbs. This low mass is primarily due to the use of a new range of pneumatic muscle actuators as the power source for the system. The work presented will show how the system takes advantage of the inherent controllable compliance to produce a unit that is powerful, providing a wide range of functionality (motion and forces over an extended range) in a manner that has high safety integrity for the user. The general layout of both the upper and the lower body exoskeleton is presented together with results from preliminary experiments to demonstrate the potential of the device in limb retraining, rehabilitation and power assist (augmentation) operations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1142/S0219843607001151
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANOID ROBOTICS
Keywords
Field
DocType
exoskeleton, soft actuation, rehabilitation
Rehabilitation,Computer science,Simulation,Ranging,Exoskeleton,Actuator
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
4
3
0219-8436
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
21
1.79
10
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Darwin G. Caldwell12900319.72
Nikolaos G. Tsagarakis240447.10
Sophia Kousidou3232.88
Nelson Costa4232.91
Ioannis Sarakoglou5728.76