A Study of an EMG-Based Exoskeletal Robot for Human Shoulder Motion Support

Abstract

We have been developing exoskeletal robots in order to realize the human motion support (especially for physically weak people). In this paper, we propose a 2-DOF exoskeletal robot and its method of control to support the human shoulder motion. In this exoskeletal robot, the flexion-extension and abduction-adduction motions of the shoulder are supported by activating the arm holder of the robot, which is atached to the upper arm of the human subject, using wires driven by DC motors. A fuzzy-neuro controller is designed to control the robot according to the skin surface electromyogram(EMG) signals in which the intention of the human subject is reflected. The proposed controller controls the flexion-extension and abduction-adduction motion of the human subject. The effectiveness of the proposed exoskeletal robot has been evaluated experimentally.