• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.824-832
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• 2011

An essential consideration to differentiate prosthetic hand from robot hand is its convenience and usefulness rather than high resolution or multi-function of the robot hand. Therefore, this study proposes a myoelectric hand with a 2 DOF auto wrist module which has 6 essential functions of the human hand such as open, grasp, pronation, supination, extension, flexion, which improves the convenience of the daily life. It consists of the 3 main parts, the myoelectric sensor for input signal without additional attachment to operate the prosthetic hand, hand mechanism with high-torqued auto-transmission mechanism and self-locking module which guarantee the safety under the abrupt emergency and minimum power consumption, and dual threshold based controller to make easy for adopting the multi-DOF myoelectric hand. We prove the validity of the proposed system with experimental results.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.171-179
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• 2003

This paper presents a rehabilitation exercise system which utilizes a 6 DOF robot as a motion generator. This system was proposed for a stroke patient or a patient who has hemiplegia. A master-slave system was designed to exercise either paralysis or abnormal limb by using normal limb motion. The study on the human body was applied to calculate the motion range of elbows and shoulders. In addition, a force-torque sensor was applied to the slave robot to estimate the rehabilitation extent of the patient. Therefore, the stability of the rehabilitation robot could be improved. By using the rehabilitation robot. the patients could exercise by themselves without assistance. In conclusion, the proposed system was verified by computer simulations and system experiment.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.505-510
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• 2017

This paper presents a low-cost robotic device for shoulder rehabilitation, which is capable of treating various shoulder disabilities. A 3-DOF passive shoulder joint tracking module was designed to allow for translational motion of the shoulder joint center during arm swing, which is essential for natural shoulder movement. The weight of the user's arm and the device were compensated for by springs, to enable gravity-free shoulder motion. In order to reduce the device's cost, only one actuator was used, which can be aligned with the user's shoulder joint in various orientations. The device is capable of implementing five representative shoulder motions, including flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, horizontal abd/adduction, internal/external rotation, and oblique raise. The proposed low-cost shoulder rehabilitation robot is expected to provide effective rehabilitation for patients with various shoulder impairments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.1021-1028
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• 2011

The objective of this paper is to optimize the design parameters of a novel mechanism for a robotic knee orthosis. The feature of the proposed knee othosis is to drive a knee joint with independent actuation during swing and stance phases, which can allow an actuator with fast rotation to control swing motions and an actuator with high torque to control stance motions, respectively. The quadriceps device operates in five-bar links with 2-DOF motions during swing phase and is changed to six-bar links during stance phase by the contact motion to the patella device. The hamstring device operates in a slider-crank mechanism for entire gait cycle. The suggested kinematic model will allow a robotic knee orthosis to use compact and light actuators with full support during walking. However, the proposed orthosis must use additional linkages than a simple four-bar mechanism. To maximize the benefit of reducing the actuators power by using the developed kinematic design, it is necessary to minimize total weight of the device, while keeping necessary actuator performances of torques and angular velocities for support. In this paper, we use a SGA (Simple Genetic Algorithm) to minimize sum of total link lengths and motor power by reducing the weight of the novel knee orthosis. To find feasible parameters, kinematic constraints of the hamstring and quadriceps mechanisms have been applied to the algorithm. The proposed optimization scheme could reduce sum of total link lengths to half of the initial value. The proposed optimization scheme can be applied to reduce total weight of general multi-linkages while keeping necessary actuator specifications.