We develop exoskeletal robots for the motion support of physically weak persons. In this study, the human elbow motion is assisted by the exoskeletal robot system, since the elbow motion is one of the simplest and the most important motion of human beings in everyday life activities. The angular position and impedance of the exoskeletal robot system are controlled by multiple fuzzy-neuro controllers. The skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the generated wrist force by the human subject during the elbow motion are used as input information of the controller. Since the activation level of working muscles tends to vary with the human subject's arm posture, an intelligent interface that cancels out the effect of posture changes of the human subject's arm is proposed in this paper. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed intelligent interface.

We deal with exoskeletal robots for human (especially for physically weak people) motion support. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy neurocontrol method for a 1-DOF exoskeletal robot to support the human elbow motion. The proposed controller controls the angular position and impedance of the exoskeletal robot system based on vague biological signals that reflect the human subject's intention. Skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the generated wrist force by the human subject during the elbow motion are used as input information of the controller. Due to the adaptation ability of the fuzzy neurocontrol, the robot is flexible enough to deal with vague biological signals such as the EMG. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

We have been developing exoskeletal robots in order to realize the human motion support (especially for physically weak people). We propose a 2 DOF exoskeletal robot to support the human shoulder motion. In this exoskeletal robot, the flexion-extension and abduction-adduction motions of the shoulder are supported by activating the arm holder of the robot, which is attached to the upper arm of the human subject, using wires driven by DC motors. A fuzzy controller has been designed to control the robot according to skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals in which intention of the human subject is reflected. The proposed controller controls the flexion-extension and abduction-adduction motion of the human subject. The effectiveness of the proposed exoskeletal robot has been evaluated by experiment.

In order to help everyday life of physically weak people, we are developing exoskeletal robots for human (especially for physically weak people) motion support. In this paper, we propose a one degree-of-freedom (1 DOF) exoskeletal robot and its control system to support the human elbow motion. The proposed controller controls the angular position and impedance of the exoskeletal robot system based on biological signals that reflect the human subject's intention. The skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the generated wrist force by the human subject during the elbow motion have been fused and used as input information of the controller. In order to make the robot flexible enough to deal with vague biological signal such as EMG, fuzzy neuro control has been applied to the controller. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed exoskeletal robot system.

We are stepping into an aging society rapidly. In that society, it is important that physically weak people are able to take care of themselves. In this paper, we introduce a 1DOF exoskeletal robot to support the elbow motion of physically weak people. Fuzzy control has been applied to control the exoskeletal robot system based on vague biological signals that reflect the human subject's intention. Skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the generated force by the human subject's wrist during the human elbow motion have been used as input information of the fuzzy controller.