Designing an Exoskeleton Robotic Arm

When designing exoskeletons it is necessary to understand the biomechanics of human walking. The human walking gait cycle is represented on a scale of 0% to 100% and includes several notable phases shown in Figure 1. The structure of a human leg contains total of 7 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) with three rotational DOFs located at the hip, one at the knee and three at the ankle. Degrees of Freedom are directional factors that affect the range of independent motion in a system. Biomechanical measures of level ground walking at the hip, knee, and ankle are shown in Figure 2. The power requirement curves display the general power fluctuation for the hip as positive or near zero, the knee as negative, and the ankle is as equally balanced. This outcome signifies

Owing to the different mechanics of the hand and arm, the styles of rehabilitation devices usually focus on either the hand or arm. However aside from inserting a splint on the wrist-hand, for support, not enough attention is paid to the joint of arm and hand-wrist. This Robot continues to be in the biological process section and solely exists as a style answer for carpus medical aid. The Wrist Robot was designed to own low resistance to a free vary of motion and to accommodate all the attainable motions of the carpus . The design specifies the employment of brush-less DC motors. These actuators use gears and an incremental high-resolution encoder for feedback.

Microprocessor knees: With an onboard computer, patients with above knee amputations now have greater control over activities such as walking, stopping, and moving up inclines. (5 Major advancements in robotic prosthetics, 2012)

Drug prescriptions may help with pain, and occupational therapy, physical therapy, and massage therapy are useful for the recovery of motor and sensory functions. However, there are limitations to these therapies, such as when and where they can be performed. Additionally research has focused on a person’s overall ability or disability in performing activities of daily living (ADL) after therapy, which doesn’t distinguish between the motor function of the affected limb and compensation by other limbs. Neurorehabilitation research contributed to changing the discussion to an individual’s level of motor and sensory function and the development of assistive haptic and robotic devices [6]. The range of technology varies from simple end-effector devices to full scale exoskeleton robots, to be fitted to the hand or affected limb.

Our final application is also our favorite and nearest to our hearts: the Ethoskeleton utilizes an advance neural linking technology in a similar manner to Bluetooth to hook directly into its wearer’s brain. This opens up a variety of possibilities for interaction, with the most impactful allowing the physically disabled to use limbs and senses that they lack or cannot utilize. The Ethoskeleton carries everything from a 3D camera to touch sensitive pads located along its frame, allowing its wearer to experience sensations either forgotten or completely

A computer is positioned on the back of the suit (thus the back of the patient) and receives data from 15 sensors to control leg movements (). For individuals with spinal cord injuries, the signals from the brain are not able to reach the legs due to an obstruction or disconnect preventing successful nerve communication. The Ekso’s very own “smart crutches” provide an alternate route of brain to leg synchronization. As the patient moves his or her arms, the smart crutches trigger a signal in the bionic knees and hips initiating a step. All of this is done with the assistance of the physical therapist. Their job is to evaluate each individual's status, ability, progress, and comfort with the Ekso. The Ekso has two distinctive settings. The first setting is fixed assist, which is optimal for patients who may be completely paralyzed or severely weakened. In this setting, “each leg of the suit can contribute a fixed amount of power to help patients complete steps in a specified amount of time ()”. The other setting is designed to help patients with spinal injuries that still allow for some nerve signaling to be transferred from the brain to the lower body. This setting is called adaptive assist and is utilized when a patient is ready to start retraining and strengthening his or her lower extremities. “Clinicians can augment their patients’ strength and adjust to produce a smooth and consistent gait ().” Essentially, the Ekso is an electronic version of a human nervous system. The computer is the”brain” of the operation that transmits electrical signals much like the biological signals transmitted in

Mobility disorder caused by SCI or related illnesses in people have been on the increase in recent years (\citet*{chen2016recent}). To help alleviate the difficulties these people go through in other to carry out their day to day activities requires certain robotic devices. Wearable robotic systems such as lower limb exoskeletons do not only provide effective and repetitive gait training but also reduce the burden of physiotherapists. This is because it allows the integration of the human intelligence with that of the mechanical power of the robot. Among other applications these devices may be required for, gait rehabilitation and human locomotion assistance via exoskeleton is of great importance to people with lower limb disorders. For any

As we all know that the use of robotics has been considered as one of the major revolution in the health care industry and it has been used for wide range of health care facilities all over the gloabe. Robots are used in many applications ranging from manufacturing of drugs, dispensing of the drugs and medicines to the patients in the hospitals and also for monitoring of the important vital statistics of the patients. Now a days,

An individual’s capacity to move is critical to carry out basic activities of daily living (ADL). Motion illnesses considerably minimize a patient’s quality of living. This can be caused by two ways- a) injuries in upper or lower extremities and b) problems in Central Nervous System (CNS-brain or spinal cord). Thanks to the improvements in technology so that new ways of treatments are available for the treatment of the seriously injured survivors especially from war. In addition and due to economic reasons, the period of primary therapy is getting shorter and shorter. These issues will probably intensity later on as longevity continues to increase coupled with the prevalence of both moderate and intense motor disabilities in the elderly population and consequently increasing their need of physical assistance. To prevent these problems, current research studies display a wide variety of products specifically assisting physical rehabilitation. Robotic devices with the capacity to perform repetitive tasks on patients are among these technically innovative devices. In fact, robotic devices are already applied in clinical practice as well as clinical evaluation for rehabilitation from TBI, injured upper or lower extremities and stroke survivors. However, considering the number of devices described in the literature, so far only a few of these have succeeded to affect the subject group [1].

With the ever-expanding medical field, I believe the next breakthrough will be advancements in robotic assisted surgeries. While it exists today, and helps in certain routine medical procedure, there is a huge potential in this field of biomedical engineering. The current procedures entail the use of a robotic mechanism that copies the movements of a doctor on a microscale that allows for less invasive surgery. With an almost tripling amount of procedures being performed since 2007, the potential of the surgical system is indeed beneficial. With the implementations of the current system on a larger scale, the medical field will expand exponentially. As the procedures become more common, the cost will decrease as competition in the market

With 17 degrees of freedom, the prosthetic is able to move freely. Using reduced order control (ROC), Cartesian space control, joint space control, muscle space control, each joint is individually programed to function a certain way [1]. Multisensory prosthetic hands use several motors for each finger joint that allow users to bend each finger individually [2]. The Modular Prosthetic Arm is programmed to sense objects so that the biomechanical phalanges

). We control the arm of Baxter by sending the desired end effector to inverse kinematics (IK) solver to obtain the joints angles (7 joints: left_s0, s1, e0, e1, w0, w1, w2) for joint positional control. The end effector position may be slightly unstable though IK is using an initialized neutral arm position as the seed. Actions are executed at 2 Hz and image frames are refreshed at the same frequency. At each time step, the cropped RGB image from head camera is resized to 80\times80

When creating a prosthetic device a hugely important aspect to consider is the control system of choice. The core of every prosthetic device is the control system, which can be mechanical, electrical or have both mechanical and electrical components. The mechanical components physically replace the missing limb in space and the electrical components enable desired movements to be executed.14 Choosing an appropriate control system provides the amputee with the ability to carry out desired movements easily and efficiently. To create an effective control system four components are essential: sensors, the controller, an actuator, and the interfacing unit14. Sensors are crucial as they are used to sense position, torque, angle, proximity, strength,

People who suffer from an amputation; those who lost a part of their body, such as an arm, use prosthesis which is an artificial device that replaces a missing limb. These prosthetic devices or prosthesis is extremely useful and plays a major role in rehabilitation. Nevertheless, Prosthetic amputee face difficulties using and controlling their artificial devices. Training programs are necessary to help them exercise their device properly. Many cases of prosthetic succumb during therapy . This project will improve the mobility of artificial arm and help people with their artificial device have an ability to manage their daily activities easily, as well as provide the means to stay independent.

This report highlights the benefits and innovative of exoskeleton to the Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Learning and Sharing Festival Organising Committee. It also suggested improvements and other way of usages that can be used for future advancement according to expert and feedback from users.