No abstract

Patients with neurological or orthopedic lesions require assistance during therapies with repetitive movements. NURSE (cassiNo-qUeretaro uppeR-limb aSsistive dEvice) is an arm movement aid device for both right- and left-upper limb. The device has a big workspace to conduct physical therapy or training on individuals including kids and elderly individuals, of any age and size. This paper describes the mechanism design of NURSE and presents a numerical procedure for testing the mechanism feasibility that includes a kinematic, dynamic, and FEM (Finite Element Method) analysis. The kinematic demonstrated that a big workspace is available in the device to reproduce therapeutic movements. The dynamic analysis shows that commercial motors for low power consumption can achieve the needed displacement, acceleration, speed, and torque. Finite Element Method showed that the mechanism can afford the upper limb weight with light-bars for a tiny design. This work has led to the construction of a NURSE prototype with a light structure of 2.6 kg fitting into a box of 35 × 45 × 30 cm. The latter facilitates portability as well as rehabilitation at home with a proper follow-up. The prototype presented a repeatability of ±1.3 cm that has been considered satisfactory for a device having components manufactured with 3D rapid prototyping technology.

This paper presents a novel exoskeleton mechanism for finger motion assistance. The exoskeleton is designed as a serial 2-degrees-of-freedom wearable mechanism that is able to guide human finger motion. The design process starts by analyzing the motion of healthy human fingers by video motion tracking. The experimental data are used to obtain the kinematics of a human finger. Then, a graphic/geometric synthesis procedure is implemented for achieving the dimensional synthesis of the proposed novel 2 degrees of freedom linkage mechanism for the finger exoskeleton. The proposed linkage mechanism can drive the three finger phalanxes by using two independent actuators that are both installed on the back of the hand palm. A prototype is designed based on the proposed design by using additive manufacturing. Results of numerical simulations and experimental tests are reported and discussed to prove the feasibility and the operational effectiveness of the proposed design solution that can assist a wide range of finger motions with proper adaptability to a variety of human fingers.

This paper describes the design of a gripper for horticulture product grasping. The design solution has been achieved by means of a systematic approach by evaluating all the possible architecture. The proposed structure is optimized and numerically simulated. Then, a prototype has been built and tested in laboratory. The design process and test results are discussed to show the efficiency of the built prototype with lab tests.

In this paper, the mechanical design of the LARMbot 2, a low-cost user-oriented humanoid robot was presented. LARMbot 2 is characterized by parallel architectures for both the torso and legs. The proposed design was presented with the kinematics of its main parts—legs, torso, arms—and then compared to its previous version, which was characterized by a different leg mechanism, to highlight the advantages of the latest design. A prototype was then presented, with constructive details of its subsystems and its technical specifications. To characterize the performance of the proposed robot, experimental results were presented for both the walking and weight-lifting operations.