Human biomechanical model based optimal design of assistive shoulder exoskeleton

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Robotic exoskeletons are being developed to assist humans in tasks such as robotic rehabilitation, assistive living, industrial and other service applications. Exoskeletons for the upper limb are required to encompass the shoulder whilst achieving a range of motion so as to not impede the wearer, avoid collisions with the wearer, and avoid kinematic singularities during operation. However this is particularly challenging due to the large range of motion of the human shoulder. In this paper a biomechanical model based optimisation is applied to the design of a shoulder exoskeleton with the objective of maximising shoulder range of motion. A biomechanical model defines the healthy range of motion of the human shoulder. A genetic algorithm maximises the range of motion of the exoskeleton towards that of the human, whilst taking into account collisions and kinematic singularities. It is shown how the optimisation can increase the exoskeleton range of motion towards that equivalent of the human, or towards a subset of human range of motion relevant to specific applications