Dissertação
Development of a Wearable Active Exoskeleton with Self-aligning Mechanism EVALUATED
Diseases like cerebral palsy, stroke, or ataxia result in a vast array of symptoms and complications for the individual, such as asymmetrical/abnormal gait patterns, loss of balance, and muscle spasticity, which will require gait rehabilitation. Robotic devices like exoskeletons and orthosis aim to assist the user during gait rehabilitation, through both torque transmission and support. Despite the increase in research on these devices, the physical human-robot interface (pHRI) has not been properly developed, leading to high abandonment. An important factor behind this statistic is the onset of soft and musculoskeletal tissue injuries due to forces and torques at the interface. Within this work, the human-robot joint misalignment problem was addressed, which is, partly, the cause of spurious forces and torques at the pHRI. An experimental protocol was developed to assess misalignment, fixation displacement, pressure interactions, and user-perceived comfort in three different ankle foot orthoses, corresponding to three different pHRI designs. These were ankle-foot orthosis with a frontal shin guard (SOF), lateral shin guard (SOL), and the commercially available ankle modulus of the H2 exoskeleton. The SOF device showed reduced misalignment and related interactions and higher user-perceived comfort in comparison with H2 while improving the SOL device in pressure and comfort. Finally, five alignment solutions were designed and implemented in the SOF device. Within these, three were manual alignment solutions for vertical, horizontal, and shin guard alignment, and two were kinematic redundancy solutions based on the release of the inversion/eversion of the ankle and the introduction of a prismatic joint.
novembro 18, 2022, 14:30
Publicação
Obra sujeita a Direitos de Autor
Orientação
ORIENTADOR
Departamento de Engenharia Mecânica (DEM)
Professor Associado