Performance evaluations of hand and forearm support system

Abstract

This paper reports support effects of an exoskeleton system for activities of a hand and an upper limb of a healthy person. The support system augments human forces of a hand, a wrist joint and an elbow joint based on bioelectric potential of each muscle so that the upper limb could be assisted by the exoskeleton with a certain rate of wearer's force. Actuators in the assistive system are replaced with powerful ones to supports human hand, wrist and elbow activities with larger force and torque. Through experiments it was confirmed that a wearer receives physical support from the system for activities of a hand, a wrist and an elbow joint and then we evaluate rate of assistance by comparing the magnitude of the bioelectric potential between under a supported phase and under an unsupported phase.