A Technological and Statistical State-of-the-Art Study Regarding Active Motion-Oriented Assistive Devices

Abstract

Active orthoses and powered exoskeletons, among other denominations, are devices made to attach to one or several human limbs in order to assist or replace its wearer's movement through means of electronicallycontrolled actuators and/or mechanical brakes. The technology developed for these devices can be used for rehabilitation, general strength enhancement for industrial or military purposes, among other situations. In order to create a comprehensive state-of-the-art work for this class of devices, several online scientific databases were used to gather articles related to this subject. Afterwards, a custom database was created to contain, organize and cross the information gathered from each relevant article. This work presents statistical results regarding the actuation technologies, the man-machine interface sensors and the corresponding interpretation algorithms. There is also a brief study about the localization of the scientific research, according to the targeted body part of the active device. The results show that the DC Motor is, by a wide margin, the most used actuator technology. This margin is reduced when wearable devices with weight constraints are developed. The electromyographic sensors are the most widely used sensors, but when these are grouped into physical variable classes, the force-related sensors show a higher number of occurrences. Regarding the processing algorithms required for the man-machine interface, it is often required to develop a custom algorithm for these devices.