외골격 로봇의 착용성 향상을 위한 착용부 연구

Abstract

Maintaining precise alignment between an exoskeletal robot and a human body is an important factor for realizing the desired performance of assistance strategy control algorithm and energy efficiency. While in the process of performing various movements, however, the alignment between the robot and the body continuously deviates. This is a challenging problem caused by differences in shapes between the robot and the human body, along with extra degrees of freedom (DoF). In this paper, an improved wearing part that prevents misalignment of exoskeletal robots without restricting movement is proposed. To evaluate wearability and the robustness in alignment, the proposed wearing part is analyzed by measuring tension changes of straps and metabolic costs before and after 5 minutes of walk at 4.1 km/h, as well as the backpack shaped wearing part, which is most widely adopted by exoskeletal robots. The experimental data verified that the improved wearing part shows better accomplishment, with 86.7% decreased in strap tension change and 80% decreased respiratory exchange ratio (RER) respectively.