A Novel Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton Designed with Variable Stiffness Mechanism

Felix Balser; Rohan Desai; Alexandros Ekizoglou; Shaoping Bai

doi:10.1109/LRA.2022.3144529

A Novel Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton Designed with Variable Stiffness Mechanism

Felix Balser, Rohan Desai, Alexandros Ekizoglou, Shaoping Bai^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

With the population of the world getting older and the working period becoming more extended, exoskeletons can be helpful to prevent occupational injuries and provide assistance for physically exhausting works. In this letter, a novel compact passive exoskeleton able to assist the elderly and workers with overhead tasks is introduced. The exoskeleton consists of a spherical shoulder mechanism and a variable stiffness mechanism, the latter being used to compensate torques due to gravity force. Numerical, analytical, and experimental analyses of the variable stiffness mechanism are carried out and compared. Topology optimisation is used to reduce the mass of the device. The final design, able to compensate for 50% of the gravitational torque of the arm with the elbow stretched, was tested and validated experimentally.

Original language	English
Journal	IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Volume	7
Issue number	2
Pages (from-to)	2748-2754
Number of pages	7
ISSN	2377-3766
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2022.3144529
Publication status	Published - 1 Apr 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor A. L. Trejos and Editor J. H. Ryu upon evaluation of the reviewers' comments. The work was supported by Innovation Fund Denmark through EXO-AIDER Project.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.

Keywords

actuation and joint mechanisms
design optimisation
Passive exoskeletons
spherical shoulder mechanism
variable stiffness mechanism

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10.1109/LRA.2022.3144529

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title = "A Novel Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton Designed with Variable Stiffness Mechanism",

abstract = "With the population of the world getting older and the working period becoming more extended, exoskeletons can be helpful to prevent occupational injuries and provide assistance for physically exhausting works. In this letter, a novel compact passive exoskeleton able to assist the elderly and workers with overhead tasks is introduced. The exoskeleton consists of a spherical shoulder mechanism and a variable stiffness mechanism, the latter being used to compensate torques due to gravity force. Numerical, analytical, and experimental analyses of the variable stiffness mechanism are carried out and compared. Topology optimisation is used to reduce the mass of the device. The final design, able to compensate for 50% of the gravitational torque of the arm with the elbow stretched, was tested and validated experimentally.",

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AU - Ekizoglou, Alexandros

AU - Bai, Shaoping

N1 - Funding Information: This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor A. L. Trejos and Editor J. H. Ryu upon evaluation of the reviewers' comments. The work was supported by Innovation Fund Denmark through EXO-AIDER Project. Publisher Copyright: © 2016 IEEE.

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A Novel Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton Designed with Variable Stiffness Mechanism

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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Erratum: A Novel Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton Designed With Variable Stiffness Mechanism (IEEE Robot. Automat. Lett. (2022) 7:2 (2748-2754) DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2022.3144529)

Cite this