An Assistive Wrist-Elbow Exoskeleton (WE-Exo) Driven by Variable Stiffness Actuators
An Assistive Wrist-Elbow Exoskeleton (WE-Exo) Driven by Variable Stiffness Actuators
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DOI：
10.1109/m2vip58386.2023.10413391
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发表时间：
2023-11
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Chao Wang;Zhenhong Li;Bo Sheng;Manoj Sivan;Zhi-Qiang Zhang;Tianzhe Bao;Guqiang Li;Shengquan Xie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Chao Wang;Zhenhong Li;Bo Sheng;Manoj Sivan;Zhi-Qiang Zhang;Tianzhe Bao;Guqiang Li;Shengquan Xie
近年来，外骨骼被开发用于辅助中风患者的康复。然而，外骨骼的物理人机交互（pHRI）的安全性仍需要进一步提高。在这项研究中，一个2自由度（2-DoF）康复外骨骼设计的辅助肘关节屈曲/伸展（FE）和手腕旋后/旋前（SP）。关节由两个独立的可变刚度致动器（VSA）提供动力，这确保了外骨骼的pHRI的本质安全性，并增强了其对环境变化的适应性，例如，碰撞每个VSA都有两个独立的直流电机，分别调节输出扭矩和刚度。为了减小外骨骼的转动惯量，腕部致动器通过线缆驱动系统与其主驱动电机耦合。设计了外骨骼的反馈线性化控制器，实现了关节的位置跟踪。外骨骼的原型开发，以评估其性能。结果表明，所提出的外骨骼可以帮助用户的运动与控制器充分。
Exoskeletons have been developed to assist the rehabilitation of stroke patients in the recent years. However, the safety of the physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) of the exoskeleton still need to be further improved. In this study, a 2-degree-of-freedom (2-DoF) rehabilitation exoskeleton is designed for the assistance of elbow flexion/extension (FE) and wrist supination/pronation (SP). The joints are powered by two independent variable stiffness actuators (VSAs), which ensures the intrinsic safety of pHRI of the exoskeleton, and enhances its adaptability to environmental changes, e.g., collisions. Each VSA has two independent DC motors to adjust the output torque and stiffness, respectively. To reduce the moment inertia of the exoskeleton, the wrist actuator is coupled with its main drive motor through a cable-driven system. A feedback linearization controller of the exoskeleton is developed to achieve position tracking of the joints. A prototype of the exoskeleton is developed to evaluate its performance. The result finds that the proposed exoskeleton can assist the movement of users sufficiently with the controller.