Design And Analysis Of Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton

Ling, Grace Kian Hwai (2018) Design And Analysis Of Passive Shoulder Exoskeleton. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Exoskeleton system represents a human-robot cooperation system which attached externally to the human body to enhance the human’s power. The existence of exoskeleton has a great impact on decreasing the rate of injuries in the industry especially the shoulder part. This is due to most of the operation in the industry required the upper limb movement, for example, lifting up the loads to a place that above the horizontal plane of the shoulder. However, these technologies have yet to make a significant impact or yet to be applied in industrial purpose due to the complex control requirements, the heaviness, and the prohibitive cost of the powered device. Thus, this paper focuses on the design of a passive shoulder exoskeleton mechanism for the flexion (90˚, 120˚, 150˚) of upper limb to eliminate the complex control requirement. As a result, gas spring is proposed as the mechanism implemented in the design as it has higher ability to against gravitational force and is more reliable than the conventional spring. The function of the device is optimized by relocating the gas spring to the side part of the device and the overall weight of the device is about 1.7kg which had achieved the ideal weight of less than 5kg to increase the overall performance. Furthermore, the analysis on the effects of the designed exoskeleton on the shoulder movement is studied from solidThinking. From the study, gas spring will accelerate more when force is applied showed the device exerted more force to act upon the force applied and thus helped in reducing the force acted on the shoulder part. The simulation test is also carried out to determine the critical stress region which in this study, the critical region is on the fillet region on Arm Length Holder – a part from the device. The purpose of carried out the simulation test is to optimize the part in future to extend the life span of the device. It is expected that the mechanism under development will aid in reducing the force applied on shoulder part to reduce the fatigue happened on shoulder part during lifting load in industrial.

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