Design of an exoskeleton for upper limb robot-assisted rehabilitation based on co-simulation

• Main Authors: Zaira Pineda-Rico, Jose Alfonso Sanchez de Lucio, Francisco Javier Martinez Lopez, Pedro Cruz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: JVE International 2016-08-01
• Series: Journal of Vibroengineering
• Subjects: exoskeleton; robot-mediated; co-simulation; upper limb; virtual design
• Online Access: https://www.jvejournals.com/article/16857

This paper presents the design and the simulation of an exoskeleton based on the kinematics of the human arm intended to be used in robot-assisted rehabilitation of the upper limb. The design meets the kinematic characteristics of the human arm so that the exoskeleton allows the movement of the arm in its full range of motion. We used co-simulation to design the exoskeleton considering a model of the upper limb developed in Opensim, Solidworks to design the mechanical structure and Matlab to construct the dynamic model. The system in motion was simulated in Simmechanics using predictive dynamics to compute independent joint trajectories obtained by modelling the exoskeleton as several optimization problems solved with SNOPT from Tomlab. The use of virtual tools in the designing process and the modular structure of the exoskeleton will allow the construction of personalized devices using 3D printing. The exoskeleton was designed to work under independent joint control so that the system will be able to work as passive, assistive and active-assistive mode, to keep records of motion for data analysis and to support the rehabilitation process.