Page 301 - Handbook of Biomechatronics

Upper and Lower Extremity Exoskeletons 293

enable training for specific activities of daily living (Nef et al., 2006).
Kousidou et al. (2006) have incorporated the Salford arm into the Rehabil-
itation Laboratory System for virtual rehabilitation of complex three-
dimensional trajectories in the workspace. Carignan et al. described a
prototype with five DOF exoskeleton systems currently under development
that focuses on shoulder rehabilitation (Carignan et al., 2005). A four DOF
power-assist exoskeleton (Kiguchi, 2007), which assists shoulder vertical and
horizontal flexion/extension motion, elbow flexion/extension motion, and
forearm pronation/supination motion, has been developed as an example of
the effective EMG-based control method for the activation on exoskeletons
according the user’s motion intention. The effectiveness of the power-assist
exoskeleton is verified by the experiment. It mainly consists of four main
links, an upper-arm holder, a wrist holder, four DC motors, the shoulder
mechanism of the moving center of rotation, the mechanism for shoulder
inner/outer rotation motion assist, an elbow joint, a wrist force sensor,
and driving wires.
Other devices for upper-limb rehabilitation, labeled as coaching devices,
do not generate any forces but provide specific feedback (Maciejasz et al.,
2014). These devices serve as input interfaces for interaction with therapeu-
tic games in VR, using video-based motion recognition (Sanchez et al.,
2004), ArmeoSpring from Hocoma AG (Gijbels et al., 2011).
Some systems for rehabilitation of fingers or hands have even higher
numbers of DOF. Examples include the system proposed by Hasegawa
et al., with 11 DOF (Hasegawa et al., 2008) and the hand exoskeleton devel-
oped at the Technical University of Berlin with 20 DOF (Fleischer et al.,
2009). The sEMG signals from the contralateral healthy limb have also been
used to control movements of the affected limb (Li et al., 2006). This
method has also been implemented in the Bi-Manu-Track system (Hesse
et al., 2003), in the ARMOR exoskeleton (Mayr et al., 2008), and in the
device proposed by Kawasaki et al. (2007). The use of the other limb to
control the affected one is especially useful during rehabilitation after stroke.

2.2 Lower Extremity Exoskeletons
In the past years, several companies have been developing lower-body
robotic exoskeletons that allow paraplegics or wheelchair users to stand
and walk and even climb stairs. These robotic devices use battery-powered
electric motors to actuate hip and knee joints and sometimes also the ankle
joints, and are controlled by motion or signals from sensors and