Lightweight, Passive Arm Support Exoskeleton

For Senior design, I served as one of three team leaders. While we designed two exoskeletons for our project, I was mostly involved with the team that worked on the unpowered, light arm exoskeleton.
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Cornell Cup Arm Enabled 2019 Finalist
VentureWell Design Excellence Award 2019

Design

The arm cuffs for the device are heavily inspired by the thigh pads I designed for the material lifting exoskeleton. Like the other design, we needed the design to be easily washed and cleaned, while holding the linkage away from the arm. While the design looks decently sleek and was very comfortable for users with thinner arms, people with larger arms found issues with placing their arms in the cuffs. A production model would need to investigate whether the issue could be solved simply by increasing the diameter, or if larger arms would require cuffs which covered the whole length.

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Note that the center of mass for the upper and lower arm always rests on top of the balance line, where we apply our forces.

I developed the simulations we used to validate the concept and determine link lengths and joint placements.

The design for this pantograph is significantly different from the later pantograph exoskeletons I worked on.

The arm cuffs for the device are heavily inspired by the thigh pads I designed for the material lifting exoskeleton. Like the other design, we needed the design to be easily washed and cleaned, while holding the linkage away from the arm. While the design looks decently sleek and was very comfortable for users with thinner arms, people with larger arms found issues with placing their arms in the cuffs. A production model would need to investigate whether the issue could be solved simply by increasing the diameter, or if larger arms would require cuffs which covered the whole length.

‍

Note that the center of mass for the upper and lower arm always rests on top of the balance line, where we apply our forces.

I developed the simulations we used to validate the concept and determine link lengths and joint placements.

The design for this pantograph is significantly different from the later pantograph exoskeletons I worked on.

Testing

For Testing, we had to deviate from the design requirement of a lightweight, washable arm cuff. While the earlier design had many benefits, it didn't fit everyone.

Additionally, we wanted to test with a more rigid connection to the arm, which helped with consistently positioning different user's elbow within the device.

Acknowledgements

This exoskeleton was an extensive collaborative work by all of the 2019 senior design team in the Assistive Robotics Lab, under the guidance of Dr. Alan Asbeck. In addition to the other two co-leads, Joshua Hull and Julian Park, the team included Andrew Bolkhovitinov, Cindy Chang, Chris Gavin, Patrick Girvan, Anna Murgia, Michelle Prisbe, Lenna Roman, Emily Schanz, Lana Volchematieva, and Josh Wenger. While we split into two subteams, everyone was heavily involved and assisted across projects, regularly.

After senior design ended, Dr. Athulia Simon, Nathan Folta, Erin Smith, and Jack Geissinger worked with Josh and me to edit the device and conduct EMG muscle activation testing.

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