Development of wrist interface based on fully actuated coaxial spherical parallel mechanism for force interaction

Abstract

To develop a wrist robotic exoskeleton-type interface (REI) for force interaction, it should have a suitable range of motion similar to human wrist activities of daily living, large torque output performance, and low moving parts inertia for dynamic motion response to cover the human behavior frequency. In this paper, a wrist REI based on a fully actuated coaxial spherical parallel mechanism (CSPM) is proposed to satisfy the aforementioned features. The fully actuated CSPM-based wrist REI (FC-WREI) has the characteristics of pure rotation similar to the human wrist, high torque output by parallel torque synthesis, and low moving parts inertia due to the base arrangement of the actuators. Due to the mechanical advantages and design optimization, the FC-WREI maximally provides torque as much as 56.49–130.43% of the maximum isometric torque of the human wrist, while providing a consistent range of motion to the human wrist without interference problem. Moreover, it is confirmed that the inertia of the FC-WREI is up to 5.35 times lower than similar devices. These advantages of the FC-WREI mean that the device is applicable to various fields of REIs for force interaction.