Assessing neuromuscular mechanisms in human-exoskeleton interaction

Abstract

In this study, we propose to evaluate a 7 DOF exoskeleton in terms of motion control. Using criteria from the human motor control literature, inverse optimization was performed to assess an industrial screwing movement. The results of our study show that the hybrid composition of the free arm movement was accurately determined. At contrary, when wearing the exoskeleton, which produces an arbitrary determined torque compensation, the motion is different from the naturally adopted one. This study is part of the evaluation and comprehension of the complex neuromuscular mechanism resulting in wearing an exoskeleton several hours per day for industrial tasks assistance.