Structural Design and Kinematic Analysis of a 6-DOF Wearable Upper Limb Exoskeleton

Nerve damaged patients often require assistance from rehabilitation devices to restore their daily live function. However, limited DOF of the rehabilitation exoskeleton and incompatibility with human motion are the major problems for the existing devices. In this work, A 6-DOF wearable upper limb rehabilitation exoskeleton is proposed and refined via 3 phases, which are kinematic analysis, structural design and in silico verification. This study initiates from work space of human shoulder. Via the research on the motion of the different joints of human upper limb, the initial design of structure is proposed. Then, kinematics analysis is carried out, followed by the motion planning. According to the size and structure of the initial analysis, the detailed structure and actuating device are realized. Finally, the dynamic analysis of elbow rotation module carried out with ADAMS, and finite element analysis of key parts conducted with ANSYS prove the feasibility of the design.