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Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton

Musculoskeletal Disorders associated with the elbow are one of the most common forms of work-related injuries. Exoskeletons have been proposed as an approach to reduce and ideally eliminate these injuries; however, exoskeletons introduce their own problems, especially discomfort due to joint misalig...

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Autores principales: Park, Daegeun, Di Natali, Christian, Sposito, Matteo, Caldwell, Darwin G., Ortiz, Jesus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10369055/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37501781
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2023.1168213
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author Park, Daegeun
Di Natali, Christian
Sposito, Matteo
Caldwell, Darwin G.
Ortiz, Jesus
author_facet Park, Daegeun
Di Natali, Christian
Sposito, Matteo
Caldwell, Darwin G.
Ortiz, Jesus
author_sort Park, Daegeun
collection PubMed
description Musculoskeletal Disorders associated with the elbow are one of the most common forms of work-related injuries. Exoskeletons have been proposed as an approach to reduce and ideally eliminate these injuries; however, exoskeletons introduce their own problems, especially discomfort due to joint misalignment. The Elbow-sideWINDER with its associated control strategy is a novel elbow exoskeleton to assist elbow flexion/extension during occupational tasks. This study describes the exoskeleton showing how this can minimize discomfort caused by joint misalignment, maximize assistive performance, and provide increased robustness and reliability in real worksites. The proposed medium-level control strategy can provide effective assistive torque using three control units as follows: an arm kinematics estimator, a load estimator, and a friction compensator. The combined hardware/software system of the Elbow-sideWINDER is tested in load-lifting tasks (2 and 7 kg). This experiment focuses on the reduction in the activation level of the biceps brachii and triceps brachii in both arms and the change in the range of motion of the elbow during the task. It is shown that using the Elbow-sideWINDER, the biceps brachii, responsible for the elbow flexion, was significantly less activated (up to 38.8% at 2 kg and 25.7% at 7 kg, on average for both arms). For the triceps brachii, the muscle activation was reduced by up to 37.0% at 2 kg and 35.1% at 7 kg, on average for both arms. When wearing the exoskeleton, the range of motion of the elbow was reduced by up to 13.0° during the task, but it was within a safe range and could be compensated for by other joints such as the waist or knees. There are extremely encouraging results that provide good indicators and important clues for future improvement of the Elbow-sideWINDER and its control strategy.
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spelling pubmed-103690552023-07-27 Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton Park, Daegeun Di Natali, Christian Sposito, Matteo Caldwell, Darwin G. Ortiz, Jesus Front Neurorobot Neuroscience Musculoskeletal Disorders associated with the elbow are one of the most common forms of work-related injuries. Exoskeletons have been proposed as an approach to reduce and ideally eliminate these injuries; however, exoskeletons introduce their own problems, especially discomfort due to joint misalignment. The Elbow-sideWINDER with its associated control strategy is a novel elbow exoskeleton to assist elbow flexion/extension during occupational tasks. This study describes the exoskeleton showing how this can minimize discomfort caused by joint misalignment, maximize assistive performance, and provide increased robustness and reliability in real worksites. The proposed medium-level control strategy can provide effective assistive torque using three control units as follows: an arm kinematics estimator, a load estimator, and a friction compensator. The combined hardware/software system of the Elbow-sideWINDER is tested in load-lifting tasks (2 and 7 kg). This experiment focuses on the reduction in the activation level of the biceps brachii and triceps brachii in both arms and the change in the range of motion of the elbow during the task. It is shown that using the Elbow-sideWINDER, the biceps brachii, responsible for the elbow flexion, was significantly less activated (up to 38.8% at 2 kg and 25.7% at 7 kg, on average for both arms). For the triceps brachii, the muscle activation was reduced by up to 37.0% at 2 kg and 35.1% at 7 kg, on average for both arms. When wearing the exoskeleton, the range of motion of the elbow was reduced by up to 13.0° during the task, but it was within a safe range and could be compensated for by other joints such as the waist or knees. There are extremely encouraging results that provide good indicators and important clues for future improvement of the Elbow-sideWINDER and its control strategy. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-07-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10369055/ /pubmed/37501781 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2023.1168213 Text en Copyright © 2023 Park, Di Natali, Sposito, Caldwell and Ortiz. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Park, Daegeun
Di Natali, Christian
Sposito, Matteo
Caldwell, Darwin G.
Ortiz, Jesus
Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
title Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
title_full Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
title_fullStr Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
title_full_unstemmed Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
title_short Elbow-sideWINDER (Elbow-side Wearable INDustrial Ergonomic Robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
title_sort elbow-sidewinder (elbow-side wearable industrial ergonomic robot): design, control, and validation of a novel elbow exoskeleton
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10369055/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37501781
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2023.1168213
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