Authors:
Daniel Pina
1
;
António Augusto Fernandes
2
;
Joaquim Gabriel Mendes
2
and
Renato Natal Jorge
3
Affiliations:
1
Instituto de Engenharia Mecânica, Portugal
;
2
Instituto de Engenharia Mecânica and Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
;
3
Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Powered exoskeleton, Active orthosis, Rehabilitation robot.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomechanical Devices
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Equipment
;
Biomedical Instruments and Devices
;
Biorobotics
;
Emerging Technologies
;
Telecommunications
;
Wireless and Mobile Technologies
;
Wireless Information Networks and Systems
Abstract:
Active orthoses and powered exoskeletons, among other denominations, are devices made to attach to one or several human limbs in order to assist or replace its wearer’s movement through means of electronically controlled actuators and/or mechanical brakes. The technology developed for these devices can be used for rehabilitation, general strength enhancement for industrial or military purposes, among other situations. In order to create a comprehensive state-of-the-art work for this class of devices, several online scientific databases were used to gather articles related to this subject. Afterwards, a custom database was created to contain, organize and cross the information gathered from each relevant article. This work presents statistical results regarding the actuation technologies, the man-machine interface sensors and the corresponding interpretation algorithms. There is also a brief study about the localization of the scientific research, according to the targeted body part o
f the active device. The results show that the DC Motor is, by a wide margin, the most used actuator technology. This margin is reduced when wearable devices with weight constraints are developed. The electromyographic sensors are the most widely used sensors, but when these are grouped into physical variable classes, the force-related sensors show a higher number of occurrences. Regarding the processing algorithms required for the man-machine interface, it is often required to develop a custom algorithm for these devices.
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