Wearable Exoskeleton Systems

Wearable exoskeletons are electro-mechanical systems designed to assist, augment, or enhance motion and mobility in a variety of human motion applications and scenarios. The applications, ranging from providing power supplementation to assist the wearers to situations where human motion is resisted for exercising applications, cover a wide range of domains such as medical devices for patient rehabilitation training recovering from trauma, movement aids for disabled persons, personal care robots for providing daily living assistance, and reduction of physical burden in industrial and military applications. The development of effective and affordable wearable exoskeletons poses several design, control and modelling challenges to researchers and manufacturers. Novel technologies are therefore being developed in adaptive motion controllers, human-robot interaction control, biological sensors and actuators, materials and structures, etc. In this book, the editors and authors report recent advances and technology breakthroughs in exoskeleton developments. It will be of interest to engineers and researchers in academia and industry as well as manufacturing companies interested in developing new markets in wearable exoskeleton robotics.

Wearable Robotics: Systems and Applications provides a comprehensive overview of the entire field of wearable robotics, including active orthotics (exoskeleton) and active prosthetics for the upper and lower limb and full body. In its two major sections, wearable robotics systems are described from both engineering perspectives and their application in medicine and industry. Systems and applications at various levels of the development cycle are presented, including those that are still under active research and development, systems that are under preliminary or full clinical trials, and those in commercialized products. This book is a great resource for anyone working in this field, including researchers, industry professionals and those who want to use it as a teaching mechanism. Provides a comprehensive overview of the entire field, with both engineering and medical perspectives Helps readers quickly and efficiently design and develop wearable robotics for healthcare applications

A wearable robot is a mechatronic system that is designed around the shape and function of the human body, with segments and joints corresponding to those of the person it is externally coupled with. Teleoperation and power amplification were the first applications, but after recent technological advances the range of application fields has widened. Increasing recognition from the scientific community means that this technology is now employed in telemanipulation, man-amplification, neuromotor control research and rehabilitation, and to assist with impaired human motor control. Logical in structure and original in its global orientation, this volume gives a full overview of wearable robotics, providing the reader with a complete understanding of the key applications and technologies suitable for its development. The main topics are demonstrated through two detailed case studies; one on a lower limb active orthosis for a human leg, and one on a wearable robot that suppresses upper limb tremor. These examples highlight the difficulties and potentialities in this area of technology, illustrating how design decisions should be made based on these. As well as discussing the cognitive interaction between human and robot, this comprehensive text also covers: the mechanics of the wearable robot and it’s biomechanical interaction with the user, including state-of-the-art technologies that enable sensory and motor interaction between human (biological) and wearable artificial (mechatronic) systems; the basis for bioinspiration and biomimetism, general rules for the development of biologically-inspired designs, and how these could serve recursively as biological models to explain biological systems; the study on the development of networks for wearable robotics. Wearable Robotics: Biomechatronic Exoskeletons will appeal to lecturers, senior undergraduate students, postgraduates and other researchers of medical, electrical and bio engineering who are interested in the area of assistive robotics. Active system developers in this sector of the engineering industry will also find it an informative and welcome resource.

Wearable Robots (explains the interaction between robot and human, implications for the rehabilitation of elderly and disabled patients the latest research into the use of wearable robots in neuromotor control research. This fully updated second edition continues with an introduction to the technology and neurophysiology associated with the interaction between the wearable robotic systems and the human body. There follows a detailed discussion of the kinemics dynamics of the system along with review of control, sensors and actuators, and communication aspects of the system, its bioinspired design, the management of its intense symbiotic interaction with the human user and new application scenarios where WRs are coordinated with other technologies, e.g neuroprosthetics and, now, paediatric applications. The book concludes with a series of case studies focused on specific upper limb and lower limb systems. The book is structured into 12 chapters; new material for the second edition includes chapters on:- Wearable Robots, Exoskeletons and Neuroprosthetics / Muscular physiology as a model / Application to actuator concepts and design / Human Biomechanics / cHRI using Bioelectrical Monitoring of Brain Activity / Hybrid control of WRs and Neuroprostheses / Sensors in Wearable Robotics / Actuators in Wearable Robotics / Wearable Upper-Limb Robots / Wearable Lower-Limb and Full-Body Robots

This book reports on the design and testing of an sEMG-based control strategy for a fully-wearable low-cost hand exoskeleton. It describes in detail the modifications carried out to the electronics of a previous prototype, covering in turn the implementation of an innovative sEMG classifier for predicting the wearer's motor intention and driving the exoskeleton accordingly. While similar classifier have been widely used for motor intention prediction, their application to wearable device control has been neglected so far. Thus, this book fills a gap in the literature providing readers with extensive information and a source of inspiration for the future design and control of medical and assistive devices.

This book describes the development of portable, wearable, and highly customizable hand exoskeletons to aid patients suffering from hand disabilities. It presents an original approach for the design of human hand motion assistance devices that relies on (i) an optimization-based kinematic scaling procedure, which guarantees a significant adaptability to the user’s hands motion, and (ii) a topology optimization-based design methodology, which allowed the design of a lightweight, comfortable device with a high level of performance. The book covers the whole process of hand exoskeleton development, from establishing a new design strategy, to the construction and testing of hand exoskeleton prototypes, using additive manufacturing techniques. As such, it offers timely information to both researchers and engineers developing human motion assistance systems, especially wearable ones.

The proceedings provide state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the area of mobile robotics and assistive technologies. The proceedings collected together peer reviewed articles presented at the CLAWAR 2013 conference. It contains a strong showing of articles on legged locomotion with numbers of legs from two onwards. There is also a good collection of articles on systems that walls climbing, poles balancing, and other more complex structures following the traditional of CLAWAR themes. In addition, the proceedings also cover the subject of robot-human interaction, which focus on a more “human” way of communicating with humanoid robots. As for human assistive devices, proceedings also cover exoskeletal and prosthetic devices, robots for personal and nursing cares to address the issues of ageing population in our society. Finally, the issue of the deployment of robots in society, it social and ethically consideration are also addressed in the proceedings.

This book addresses cutting-edge topics in robotics and related technologies for rehabilitation, covering basic concepts and providing the reader with the information they need to solve various practical problems. Intended as a reference guide to the application of robotics in rehabilitation, it covers e.g. musculoskeletal modelling, gait analysis, biomechanics, robotics modelling and simulation, sensors, wearable devices, and the Internet of Medical Things.