“soft” Exoskeletons for Upper and Lower Body

The basic concepts for exoskeletal systems have been suggested for some time with 21 applications ranging from construction, manufacturing and mining to rescue and emergency services. In recent years, research has been driven by possible uses in medi23 cal/rehabilitation and military applications. Yet there are still significant barriers to the effective use and exploitation of this technology. Among the most pertinent of these 25 factors is the power and actuation system and its impact of control, strength, speed and, perhaps most critically, safety. This work describes the design, construction and test27 ing of an ultra low-mass, full-body exoskeleton system having seven degrees of freedom (DOFs) for the upper limbs and five degrees of freedom (DOFs) for each of the lower 29 limbs. This low mass is primarily due to the use of a new range of pneumatic muscle actuators as the power source for the system. The work presented will show how the 31 system takes advantage of the inherent controllable compliance to produce a unit that is powerful, providing a wide range of functionality (motion and forces over an extended 33 range) in a manner that has high safety integrity for the user. The general layout of both the upper and the lower body exoskeleton is presented together with results from 35 preliminary experiments to demonstrate the potential of the device in limb retraining, rehabilitation and power assist (augmentation) operations. 37