Evaluation of an improved soft meal assistive exoskeleton with an adjustable weight-bearing system for people with disability

Abstract

These days, many people suffer from impairments caused by diseases and accidents. Impaired arm function is one of the biggest problem interrupting the activities of daily living for these people. To assist these people with the activities of daily life, many assistive devices for arm motion have been developed. However, many issues arise in their use in actual life, such as the need for customization, costs, and appearance. We focus on the soft meal assistive exoskeleton to minimize the two main issues for typical rigid body devices, structural complexity and cost. We use soft materials and apply the concept of target-oriented rehabilitation to reduce complex arm motions to simple motions. Also, we apply the adjustable weight-bearing system to the soft meal assistive exoskeleton to reduce the required motor power, which is one of the main challenges to reducing running time, size and costs. To evaluate improvement, we measured motor current, which indicates the motor power when the soft meal assistive exoskeleton pulls the upper arm to generate the desired trajectory.