Development of a Novel Low-profile Robotic Exoskeleton Glove for Patients with Brachial Plexus Injuries.

This paper presents the design and development of a novel, low-profile, exoskeleton robotic glove aimed for people who suffer from brachial plexus injuries to restore their lost grasping functionality. The key idea of this new glove lies in its new finger mechanism that takes advantage of the rigid coupling hybrid mechanism (RCHM) concept. This mechanism concept couples the motions of the adjacent human finger links using rigid coupling mechanisms so that the overall mechanism motion (e.

DESIGN, ANALYSIS, AND PROTOTYPING OF A NOVEL SINGLE DEGREE-OF-FREEDOM INDEX FINGER EXOSKELETON MECHANISM.

This paper presents a novel index finger exoskeleton mechanism for patients who suffer from brachial plexus injuries, which takes advantage of our previously proposed rigid coupling hybrid mechanism (RCHM) concept used for robotic tail mechanisms. The core idea of this concept is to drive the (+1)-th link using the motions of the -th link, instead of the traditional way of transmitting motion directly from the base. This specific configuration allows designing a single degree of freedom (DOF) bending mechanism using a low-profile rack and pinion mechanism and makes the proposed exoskeleton system compact, lightweight, and portable, which are highly desired features for daily usages of exoskeleton gloves.

Dynamic Modeling, Analysis, and Design Synthesis of a Reduced Complexity Quadruped with a Serpentine Robotic Tail.

Serpentine tail structures are widely observed in the animal kingdom and are thought to help animals to handle various motion tasks. Developing serpentine robotic tails and using them on legged robots has been an attractive idea for robotics. This article presents the theoretical analysis for such a robotic system that consists of a reduced complexity quadruped and a serpentine robotic tail.

Maneuvering and stabilization control of a bipedal robot with a universal-spatial robotic tail.

This paper analyzes control methodologies to implement maneuvering and stabilization behaviors in a bipedal robot using a bioinspired robotic tail. Looking to nature, numerous animals augment their legs' functionality using a tail nature, numerous animals augment their legs' functionality using a tail to assist with both maneuvering and stabilization; looking to the robotics literature, previous research primarily focuses on single-mass, pendulum-like tails designed to perform a specific task. The overarching goal of this research is to study how bioinspired tail designs may be used in conjunction with low-complexity leg designs to achieve high-performance behaviors.