TY - GEN

T1 - Towards semi-autonomous and soft-robotics enabled upper-limb exoprosthetics: First concepts and robot-based emulation prototype

AU - Kuhn, Johannes

AU - Ringwald, Johannes

AU - Schappler, Moritz

AU - Johannsmeier, Lars

AU - Haddadin, Sami

N1 - Funding information: The authors greatly acknowledge the funding of this work by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 grant “SOFTPRO” (no. 688857). The authors want to thank undergraduate students J. Jankowski, A. Kuhn and L. Jürgens for supporting this work.

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - In this paper the first robot-based prototype of a semi-autonomous upper-limb exoprosthesis is introduced, unifying exoskeletons and prostheses [1]. A central goal of this work is to minimize unnecessary interaction forces on the residual limb by compensating gravity effects via a upper body grounded exoskeleton. Furthermore, the exoskeleton provides the residual limb's kinematic data that allows to design more intelligent coordinated control concepts. The soft-robotics design of a prototype consisting of a transhumeral prosthesis and a robot-based exoskeleton substitute is outlined. For this class of hybrid systems a human embodied dynamics model and semi-autonomous coordinated motion strategies are derived. Here, in contrast to established standard sequential strategies all joints are moved simultaneously according to a desired task. In combination with an app-based programming framework the strategy goals are set either user-based via kinesthetic teaching or autonomously via 3D visual perception. This enables the user to execute tasks faster and more intuitive. First experimental evaluations show promising performance with a healthy subject.

AB - In this paper the first robot-based prototype of a semi-autonomous upper-limb exoprosthesis is introduced, unifying exoskeletons and prostheses [1]. A central goal of this work is to minimize unnecessary interaction forces on the residual limb by compensating gravity effects via a upper body grounded exoskeleton. Furthermore, the exoskeleton provides the residual limb's kinematic data that allows to design more intelligent coordinated control concepts. The soft-robotics design of a prototype consisting of a transhumeral prosthesis and a robot-based exoskeleton substitute is outlined. For this class of hybrid systems a human embodied dynamics model and semi-autonomous coordinated motion strategies are derived. Here, in contrast to established standard sequential strategies all joints are moved simultaneously according to a desired task. In combination with an app-based programming framework the strategy goals are set either user-based via kinesthetic teaching or autonomously via 3D visual perception. This enables the user to execute tasks faster and more intuitive. First experimental evaluations show promising performance with a healthy subject.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85071503507&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/ICRA.2019.8794332

DO - 10.1109/ICRA.2019.8794332

M3 - Conference contribution

SN - 978-1-5386-8176-3

T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation

SP - 9180

EP - 9186

BT - 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

T2 - 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019

Y2 - 20 May 2019 through 24 May 2019

ER -