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We propose a human mimetic foot structure for musculoskeletal humanoids. We designed the foot structure by inspiring from human foot abilities of the multi-bone connected structure for flexibility and the distributed force sensor system. The foot has multi-DOFs structure including toe DOF that is composed of fingers. The distributed force sensing system is composed of 12 an-axis force sensors. In...
Exoskeletons are wearable robots i.e. robots coupled to the body of a user and commanded by him/her. The fields of application involve among others, the military as well as the medical industries. This paper presents the design of part of an exoskeleton aimed to enhance the performance of people that have had spinal injury or that suffer from some problem or pain in the lumbar area. An experimental...
This paper presents a new antagonistic tendon-driven joint (TDJ) which has an advantage of enhanced stiffness characteristics. Detailed mathematical analyses on the stiffness of typical TDJs are worked out to compare the stiffness among them. Prototypes of the proposed TDJ design are introduced in the form of packaged modular structure that merges two TDJs generating a combined roll-pitch motion or...
Weight and power consumption of variable stiffness actuation mechanism are critical for its implementation in a portable assistive device combined with an actuator, gearhead, elastic element, and batteries. Therefore, we present a portable stiffness modulation mechanism for an Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) utilizing pneumatic stiffness. The mechanism consists of two units: a driving unit that controls...
This work presents a comparison between two optimization methods used to compute the muscle activation levels and corresponding forces that drives a set of generalized coordinates towards a set of desired trajectories. To improve the performance of musculoskeletal optimizations a supplemental set of actuators is often included in addition to the modeled muscles. Given a dynamic musculoskeletal model...
This paper describes the development of an ankle training robot force visualization for eccentric contraction training. In the mechanism of walking, the eccentric contraction of the tibialis anterior muscle plays an important part in the phase between heel-strike and foot-flat as a shock absorber. However, the eccentric contraction has not been reported in previous research on ankle rehabilitation...
Exoskeletons have been used successfully for functional training of human motions. Our designs of the Cable-driven Arm Exoskeleton (CAREX) are targeted to improve arm function in patients with stroke. In this study, we focus on how muscle activation patterns of subjects change during movements with and without CAREX. Our goal was to evaluate whether CAREX distorts the natural pattern of EMG activity...
Artificial muscle is a new type of biomimetic actuator particularly promising for naturally compliant mechatronic and robotic systems. Due to their highly non-linear character, their accurate closed-loop positioning control is a true challenge. We report the design and the control of a wire-cable driven artificial muscle actuator inspired by the elbow natural musculature. We propose an original linear...
In this paper, individual muscular forces of the lower limb are estimated in real-time by inverse dynamics-based static optimization with a wearable sensor system. The wearable sensor system consists of inertial measurement units (IMUs) and manually developed ground reaction force (GRF) sensors. Joint torques of the lower limb during walking are calculated in real-time by applying inverse dynamics...
DMSP-10mm–80mm-RM-CM Pneumatic Muscle Actuator (PMA) which is manufactured by FESTO is tested in the test bed with air cylinder and sensors. Isobaric, isotonic and isometric contraction characteristics of the PMA is got to know through experiment. Mechanical structure of humanoid lower limb is designed with the PMA, which combined with cable to replace corresponding human muscles. kinematic and dynamic...
This paper presents a myoelectric control of an arm exoskeleton designed for rehabilitation. A four-muscles-based NeuroMusculoSkeletal (NMS) model was implemented and optimized using genetic algorithms to adapt the model to different subjects. The NMS model is able to predict the shoulder and elbow torques which are used by the control algorithm to ensure a minimal force of interaction. The accuracy...
Need to develop human body's posture supervised robots, gave the push to researchers to think over dexterous design of exoskeleton robots. It requires to develop quantitative techniques to assess motor function and generate the command for the robots to act accordingly with complex human structure. In this paper, we present a new technique for the upper limb power exoskeleton robot in which load is...
The soft robotics approach is widely considered to enable robots in the near future to leave their cages and move freely in our modern homes and manufacturing sites. Musculoskeletal robots are such soft robots which feature passively compliant actuation, while leveraging the advantages of tendon-driven systems. Even though these robots have been intensively researched within the last decade, high-performance...
In this paper, an sEMG-driven musculoskeletal model of human shoulder and elbow joints is built based on time delay neural network (TDNN). Six principal muscles of the upper arm and forearm are included, and the experiment was conducted under isometric contractions with the aid of a planar haptic interface. Both force amplitude and direction were regulated continuously, and the experiment results...
This paper proposes an estimation method of muscular strength based on only output force information at an end-effector of a limb. The muscular strength estimated by the proposal is neither the strength of arms and legs nor torque of a joint. It is output force of functionally-classified muscle groups. Convergence performance of estimation results is improved by utilizing a model taking joint angular...
In recent years, the population of elderly people is increasing rapidly. Rehabilitation training systems using robotics and virtual reality technologies, therefore, attracts attention. This paper introduces the development of an upper limb rehabilitation robot with guidance control. This study investigates how the motor learning effect improves with low stiffness guidance control based on pneumatic...
It is believed that humans are keen to learn and initiate more efficient and less energy consumption strategies, especially when they desire repetitive work or motion. However, in human's balancing process, the ability to adapt a repeated surface movement and its response towards imbalance, due to less sensory input, is still unclear. In this study, adaptation behaviours of joint stiffness pattern...
In our previous research, we have developed a novel standing assistance system, which uses a remaining physical strength of an elderly person. For realizing it, the assistance system needs to estimate the load of a patient and in many cases, the previous researchers use a joint traction which can be derived by a human linkages model kinematically for evaluating it. However, human body motions are...
Adaptability of quadruped animals is not solely reached by brain control, but by the interaction between its body, environment, and control. Especially, morphology of the body is supposed to contribute largely to the adaptability. We have tried to understand quadrupedal locomotion by building a bio-inspired quadruped robot named “Pneupard”, which has a feline-like muscular-skeletal structure. In our...
Cyclical locomotion, such as walking, hopping and running, is known to be generated at the spinal cord, guiding human and animal strides over different gaits. Over the last years, many researchers concentrated their study on the origin of such signals, replicating them by either controlling joint angles or torques. In this work, we use a quadruped pneumatic robot to reproduce stable walking on a treadmill...
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