Virtual decomposition control of an exoskeleton robot arm

Exoskeleton robots, which can be worn on human limbs to improve or to rehabilitate their function, are currently of great importance. When these robots are used in rehabilitation, one aspect that must be fulfilled is their capacity to adapt to different patients without significantly varying their p...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Robotica 2016-07, Vol.34 (7), p.1587-1609
Main Authors: Ochoa Luna, Cristóbal, Rahman, Mohammad Habibur, Saad, Maarouf, Archambault, Philippe, Zhu, Wen-Hong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Complex systems
Decomposition
Dynamical systems
Dynamics
Exoskeletons
Mathematical analysis
Patients
Robots
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Exoskeleton robots, which can be worn on human limbs to improve or to rehabilitate their function, are currently of great importance. When these robots are used in rehabilitation, one aspect that must be fulfilled is their capacity to adapt to different patients without significantly varying their performance. This paper describes the application of a relatively new control technique called virtual decomposition control (VDC) to a seven degrees-of-freedom (DOF) exoskeleton robot arm, named ETS-MARSE. The VDC approach mainly involves decomposing complex systems into subsystems, and using the resulting simpler dynamics to conduct control computation, while strictly ensuring global stability and having the subsystem dynamics interactions rigorously managed and maintained by means of virtual power flow. This approach is used to deal with different masses, joint stiffness and biomechanical variations of diverse subjects, allowing the control technique to naturally adapt to the variances involved and to maintain a successful control task. The results obtained in real time on a 7DOF exoskeleton robot arm show the effectiveness of the approach.
ISSN:0263-5747
1469-8668
DOI:10.1017/S026357471400246X