Design of a rotary passive viscoelastic joint for wearable robots

Giorgio Carpino; Dino Accoto; Michelangelo Di Palo; Nevio Luigi Tagliamonte; Fabrizio Sergi; Eugenio Guglielmelli

doi:10.1109/ICORR.2011.5975356

Design of a rotary passive viscoelastic joint for wearable robots

IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2011:2011:5975356. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2011.5975356.

Authors

Giorgio Carpino¹, Dino Accoto, Michelangelo Di Palo, Nevio Luigi Tagliamonte, Fabrizio Sergi, Eugenio Guglielmelli

Affiliation

¹ Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Laboratory of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems, Rome, Italy.

PMID: 22275560
DOI: 10.1109/ICORR.2011.5975356

Abstract

In the design of wearable robots that strictly interact with the human body and, in general, in any robotics application that involves the human component, the possibility of having modular joints able to produce a viscoelastic behaviour is very useful to achieve an efficient and safe human-robot interaction and to give rise to emergent dynamical behaviors. In this paper we propose the design of a compact, passive, rotary viscoelastic joint for assistive wearable robotics applications. The system integrates two functionally distinct sub-modules: one to render a desired torsional stiffness profile and the other to provide a desired torsional damping. Concepts and design choices regarding the overall architecture and the single components are presented and discussed. A viscoelastic model of the system has been developed and the design of the joint is presented.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Equipment Design
Humans
Joints / physiology*
Models, Theoretical
Robotics / instrumentation*
Robotics / methods*