Design and control of a wearable robot

Abstract

The concept of wearability will be recognized very important in future robotics as in computer science. There is a strong possibility that wearable robots suggest a new direction for human-robot interaction. In this paper, we propose RoboWear, a wearable robot that a human operator wears on his arm for the purpose of human-robot interaction. The wearable robot can be used to amplify human power, to control a remote robot dexterously, to interact with humans in virtual environment. In this paper, the authors designed RoboWear that has active 7 DOF with suitable device to be worn by a human operator. Based on the anatomical analysis of a human arm and the distribution of multiple DOF over the space, authors designed a wearable robot with a hybrid structure consisting of two parallel manipulators and three separate joints. An operator wearing the robot arm can move around freely, because this robot is designed to have its base supported at the shoulder part of the operator. The total weight of the proposed robot arm is approximately 4 kg. Pneumatic actuators are used to reduce the total weight of the robot, to improve compliance with human motion and to generate high reactive forces. The feasibility of the wearable robot is demonstrated by examining the control performance and by incorporating the wearable robot with virtual environment.