Development of a Cable-Driven Upper Limb Exosuit for Both Pulling and Lifting

This paper presents an upper limb exosuit for human augmentation. The exosuit utilizes a low-cost air pressure sensing glove based on the principle of air pressure to detect hand grasping states. It achieves assistance in upper limb elbow flexion movements during activities such as pulling and lifting through a driving module and wire rope for power transmission. To verify the effectiveness of the upper limb exosuit, pull-ups and lifting experiments were performed on five healthy participants with and without the exosuit. The surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals were recorded from selected muscles (Brachioradialis (BR), biceps brachii (BB) and latissimus dorsi (LD)) to assess how well the exosuit is helping the body. The results indicate a significant decrease in both the mean and peak value of the average normalized sEMG signals of the selected muscles during the pullup and load-lifting experiments. The finding indicates that the designed upper limb exosuit system can reduce muscle activation during pulling up and lifting tasks, effectively providing assistance. Future research directions include further optimizing the exosuit’s mechanical structure, improving the air pressure sensing glove’s state recognition accuracy and validating the application effectiveness of the exoskeleton suit in specific scenarios such as rock climbing and rope climbing.