| Abstract: |
Nowadays, Wearable Human Extremity Exoskeleton (WHEE) is well known and attractive, and as a result, many scholars and engineers have thrown themselves into the research and development of WHEE. While up to now, few successful WHEE products have been exploited. Therefore, a question rises naturally, and what are the critical issues leading to the tough emergence of WHEE product? The question is tried to be replied here from the aspect of technology. The current presentation is mainly divided into two parts. In the first half, the research activities on WHEE are reviewed, which include the achievements for both strengthening the healthy population on power as well as motion and assisting the disabled or ailing population in medical treating, recovering and acting in daily life. Additionally, the key technologies, such as biomimetic structure design, motion intention prediction, control strategy, etc., are outlined, which are primarily responsible for the logy advancement of WHEE. Approximately in the past six years, massive work related to WHEE, especially for the healthy population, has been carried out theoretically, numerically and experimentally by our team in NUST, P.R. China. Hence, several of them are demonstrated selectively in the following second half. Initially, the way to design biomimetic structure established by us is introduced, which is significant for motion feasibility, security of WHEE as well as dead-weight optimization. And then, the control schemes adopted by us are illustrated, which are crucial to the motion flexibility and assistance efficiency. Ultimately, the WHEE prototypes built by us are shown, which have been tested and used to validate the methods, technologies already achieved by us. |
