Design of an Underactuated Body Fixture for a 7-DOF Cable-Driven Upper Limb Exoskeleton

Abstract

Rehabilitation robots can provide effectively motion training for neural impaired patients. When developing rehabilitation exoskeletons, the design of physical connections between the device and the human limb to which it is connected is a crucial problem. A seven-degrees-of-freedom cable-driven upper limb exoskeleton is designed for physical therapy, which preserves the advantages with both cable-driven device and parallel mechanism. In this paper, in order to reduce the kinematic uncertainties caused by instabilities when wearing the exoskeleton, a novel underactuated body fixture which can adapt to the contours of human upper limb is designed. Simulations and experimental results are included to show the effectiveness of the research.