Showing papers on "Exoskeleton Device published in 2007"

A planar 3DOF robotic exoskeleton for rehabilitation and assessment

Abstract: A new robotic exoskeleton for the upper-limb has been designed and constructed. Its primary purpose is to act as a proof-of-concept prototype for a more sophisticated rehabilitation and assessment device that is currently in development. Simultaneously, it is intended to extend the capabilities of an existing planar exoskeleton device. The robot operates in the horizontal plane and provides independent control of a user's shoulder, elbow and wrist joints using a cable-driven actuation system. The novel component of the design is a curved track and carriage which allows the mechanism that drives the shoulder joint to be located away from the user, underneath their arm. This paper describes the design of the robot, and provides an initial indication of its performance.

A pilot clinical study on robotic assisted rehabilitation in VR with an arm exoskeleton device

Abstract: The development of new robotic devices for rehabilitation can lead to new and more efficient therapeutic procedures. Moreover, the use of VR-based scenarios in which patients perform rehabilitation exercises dramatically increases the patients? motivation and thus the final therapy outcome. In this paper preliminary results of a pilot study carried out with an exoskeleton for the robotic assisted rehabilitation of the upper limb are presented. The paper briefly describes the main kinematic and mechanical features of the exoskeleton system, showing its peculiar characteristics which make it useful for rehabilitation purposes. The implementation of three different robotic schemes of therapy in virtual reality with this exoskeleton, based on an impedance control architecture, are presented and discussed in detail. Finally, qualitative and quantitative results obtained in a 6 week pilot study with three chronic stroke patients are reported.

Distributed Control and Safety System for a Rehabilitation Arm Exoskeleton

Abstract: A modular control and safety architecture is described for a robotic arm exoskeleton designed for shoulder rehabilitation. The exoskeleton joints are partitioned into anthropomorphic sets based on the desired exercise protocol, which are then commanded using separate control modules. A composite control software architecture is used to enable simultaneous operation of joint sets in either impedance or admittance control modes. Preliminary hazard and fault tree analyses identified three major hazards, and a combination of redundant sensing, hardware limits and software safety checks were used to produce a single fail-safe design. A quantitative fault tree analysis was also performed to assess the risk of a hazard due to a failure. The application of this approach to the MGA Exoskeleton was shown to improve the safety of the overall system.Copyright © 2007 by ASME

Haptics for Recognizing and Quantifying Hand Movement Patterns for Authentication

Abstract: Haptics is the discipline that deals with the study of the complex sense of touch as an interface between human beings and machines. Haptic technology has been proven applicable and practical in many fields, including scientific visualization, medical training, authentication and other areas such as education and arts. This research investigates the usage of haptics as a mechanism to extract users' behaviors and to build a biometric system for authentication. We captured human behavior while users were interacting with two haptic devices: the Desktop PHANToM device (single-point interaction) and the CyberForce system (hand exoskeleton device). Experimental results, based on a set of haptic-based applications, show that single-point interaction haptic devices are suitable for authentication purposes. On the other hand, multiple-point haptic devices --hand exoskeleton devices-still seem to be far from being used in a haptic-biometric system. When using hand exoskeleton devices, the extracted features are not a good source of rich information to characterize a biometric identifier system.