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Optimization of design parameters and improvement of human comfort conditions in an upper-limb exosuit for assistance

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Abstract

Exoskeleton robots have a wide range of applications in industrial field as well as for patients with locomotor disability. Among them, the flexible exoskeleton, known as “exosuit”, has attracted great interest from researchers. They are usually made up of flexible components such as cables and pieces of fabric. Since there are no rigid frames and links in the exosuits, they are much lighter and have less misalignment problems than the rigid exoskeletons. However, excessive pressure exerted by cables on soft tissues and skeleton of the human will lead to discomfort or even injuries. In this paper, a cable transmission system is incorporated into the exosuit system for gravitational compensation. The human body is assumed to be upright in the cable-driving wearable robot modeling. Then, a multi-criteria optimization approach, based on swarm intelligence, has been developed and adopted for reducing the uncomfortable forces applied on the user. Furthermore, the energy consumption is also taken into account in the design phase. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that the proposed exosuit design results in a reduction of more than 50% and 34% in the forces exerted on human body with loads of 0.5 kg and 5 kg, respectively. The energy loss was also reduced by up to 63% and 21% in these two cases.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council [Grant Number: 202008070129].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LS2N, ECN-Nantes Université UMR 6004, 1 rue de la Noë, BP 92101, Nantes, F-44321, France

    Yaodong Lu, Yannick Aoustin & Vigen Arakelian

  2. Mecaproce, INSA-Rennes, 20 av. des Buttes de Coesmes, CS 70839, Rennes, F-35708, France

    Yaodong Lu & Vigen Arakelian

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  1. Yaodong Lu
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Contributions

Yaodong Lu and Yannick Aoustin conceived and designed the study. Yaodong Lu, Yannick Aoustin, and Vigen Arakelian wrote the article. All authors reviewed the manuscript. Yannick Aoustin and Vigen Arakelian contributed equally to this work.

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Correspondence to Yaodong Lu.

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The second author Yannick Aoustin is an Editorial Board Member. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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Lu, Y., Aoustin, Y. & Arakelian, V. Optimization of design parameters and improvement of human comfort conditions in an upper-limb exosuit for assistance. Multibody Syst Dyn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11044-024-09977-1

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