Verification of Compliance on Funabot-Plate: Semisoft Assistive Robot with Artificial Muscle and Rigid Plate

Compliance is important for the rehabilitation of wearable assistive robots. Various methods have been studied to improve the compliance of wearable robots, such that the use of impedance control of actuators and soft actuators with high compliance. On the other hand, for robots whose degrees of freedom of movement are limited by rotational axes like conventional robots, compliance performance may deteriorate due to mounting misalignment even if the actuator is designed optimally. Soft wearable devices that do not have rigid joints and are composed of soft base materials also exist, but the force is dispersed and cannot exert great force. Our Funabot- Plate consists of a base cloth, McKibben-type pneumatic artificial muscles, and thin, rigid plates that efficiently transfer the exerted force of the artificial muscles to the human body. Thus, Funabot-Plate expects a high output efficiency while high compliance. To verify the structural validity of the Funabot- Plate, two experiments were conducted to quantitatively compare its compliance characteristics with the rigid-frame robot. Through the measurement experiments, we were able to quantitatively evaluate that the structure of Funabot- Plate exhibited higher compliance in both conditions, transparent mode and assist mode, when compared to conventional rigid-frame robots.

I. Introduction

Post-stroke individuals can be difficult to perform the same as a healthy person because of neurological sequelae. Continuous rehabilitation is required to improve the quality of life of post-stroke individuals. The effectiveness of wearable assistive robots has been studied as one way to implement rehabilitation [1]. On previous research [2], rehabilitation with wearable assistive robots also restores physical functions.