An Exoskeletal Robot for Human Shoulder Joint Motion Assist

We have been developing exoskeletal robots in order to assist the motion of physically weak persons such as elderly persons or handicapped persons. In our previous research, a prototype of a two degree of freedom exoskeletal robots for shoulder joint motion assist have been developed since the shoulder motion is especially important for people to take care of themselves in everyday life. In this paper, we propose an effective fuzzy-neuro controller, a moving mechanism of the center of rotation (CR) of the shoulder joint of the exoskeletal robot, and intelligent interface in order to realize a practical and effective exoskeletal robot for shoulder joint motion assist. The fuzzy-neuro controller enables the robot to assist any person’s shoulder motion. The moving mechanism of the CR of the robot shoulder joint is used to fit the CR of the robot shoulder joint to that of the physiological human shoulder joint during the shoulder motion. The intelligent interface is realized by applying a neural network and used to cancel out the effect the human subject’s arm posture change. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been evaluated by experiment.