KULEX: An ADL Power-Assistance Demonstration

Abstract

A new robotic system for upper-limb power assistance for the elderly and the disabled has been developed by our research group. It is composed of three main modules, a 1-DOF under-actuated hand module to assist with hand grasp motions, a 3-DOF exoskeleton-type parallel wrist mechanism for wrist power assistance, and a 6-DOF serial chain to assist with arbitrary movements of the operator’s forearm. The system uses a pseudo-exoskeleton approach; accordingly, some problems caused by the inconsistency between the joint axes of the robot and the human operator can be minimized. In this paper, an overview of the second version of the robotic system is introduced. Furthermore, the operating capability of the proposed robot is observed in a demonstration of the robot performing several activities-of-daily-living (ADL) tasks, such as picking up a pen with a pinch grasp, gripping an object with a power grasp, and the brushing of teeth.