An exoskeletal robot for human elbow motion support - sensor fusion, adaptation, and control

In order to help everyday life of physically weak people, we are developing exoskeletal robots for human (especially for physically weak people) motio n support. In this paper, we propose a one degree-of-freedom (1 DOF) exoske letal robot and its control system to support the human elbow motion. The p roposed controller controls the angular position and impedance of the exosk eletal robot system based on biological signals that reflect the human subj ect's intention, The skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the gene rated wrist force by the human subject during the elbow motion have been fu sed and used as input information of the controller. In order to make the r obot flexible enough to deal with vague biological signal such as EMG, fuzz y neuro control has been applied to the controller. The experimental result s show the effectiveness of the proposed exoskeletal robot system.