Abstract
Back injuries are the most prevalent work-related musculoskeletal disorders and represent a major cause of disability. Although innovations in wearable robots aim to alleviate this hazard, the majority of existing exoskeletons are obtrusive because the rigid linkage design limits natural movement, thus causing ergonomic risk. Moreover, these existing systems are typically only suitable for one type of movement assistance, not ubiquitous for a wide variety of activities. To fill in this gap, this letter presents a new wearable robot design approach continuum soft exoskeleton. This spine-inspired wearable robot is unobtrusive and assists both squat and stoops while not impeding walking motion. To tackle the challenge of the unique anatomy of spine that is inappropriate to be simplified as a single degree of freedom joint, our robot is conformal to human anatomy and it can reduce multiple types of forces along the human spine such as the spinae muscle force, shear, and compression force of the lumbar vertebrae. We derived kinematics and kinetics models of this mechanism and established an analytical biomechanics model of human-robot interaction. Quantitative analysis of disc compression force, disc shear force and muscle force was performed in simulation. We further developed a virtual impedance control strategy to deliver force control and compensate hysteresis of Bowden cable transmission. The feasibility of the prototype was experimentally tested on three healthy subjects. The root mean square error of force tracking is 6.63 N (3.3% of the 200 N peak force) and it demonstrated that it can actively control the stiffness to the desired value. This continuum soft exoskeleton represents a feasible solution with the potential to reduce back pain for multiple activities and multiple forces along the human spine.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 8798687 |
Pages (from-to) | 4547-4554 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2019 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Control and Systems Engineering
- Biomedical Engineering
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Mechanical Engineering
- Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
- Computer Science Applications
- Control and Optimization
- Artificial Intelligence
Keywords
- Back exoskeleton
- continuum mechanism
- soft robot
- stoop lifting