STRING-MAN: Wire-robot technology for safe, flexible and human-friendly gait rehabilitation

Abstract

The paper presents a novel concept of lightweight and inherently safe robotic systems for assisting the locomotion recovery therapy and training. This concept, referred to as STRING-MAN, is established on string-puppet idea and utilizes modular wire robot components and advanced artificial muscles drives. An overview of the system's fundamental components, such as mechanical structure, patient-machine interface, sensory systems, control algorithms, etc, is given in the paper. The results of initial experiments clearly demonstrate the benefits and potential of new concept. Finally further development of STRING-MAN idea towards practical and inherently safe robotic rehabilitation assistants has also been presented. Entnommen aus <a href="http://www.fiz-technik.de/db/b_tema.htm" target="_blank">TEMA</a

Sliding Mode Control Compared to PID Control Applied for a 4 Cables Parallel Robot

“…These robots have few moving parts, with reduced mass, and are most suitable for tasks required high performance such as speed and accuracy and provide a large workspace [3]. By moving the cables connections points, it also has a work space much more grace to rolling cables, which allow the effector to be very far from its base, and reduce the distance near zero with very high acceleration, and the main advantage of the cable are; a larger workspace for the same overall dimension of the robot; light weight cables resulting in very safe an transportable system [4].…”

“…For these reasons, cables-driven robots have received attention and have been recently studied [1]. The cable parallel robot are a special class of parallel mechanisms, whose trusts consist of cables whose lengths are adjustable to control the end-effector's position and orientation [2], this last is a fully parallel mechanism in closed chains with n degrees of freedom for the end effector; this last is connected to fixed platform by m cables; and each cable connects an output point attached to the fixed based of the robot to the mobile platform.These robots have few moving parts, with reduced mass, and are most suitable for tasks required high performance such as speed and accuracy and provide a large workspace [3]. By moving the cables connections points, it also has a work space much more grace to rolling cables, which allow the effector to be very far from its base, and reduce the distance near zero with very high acceleration, and the main advantage of the cable are; a larger workspace for the same overall dimension of the robot; light weight cables resulting in very safe an transportable system [4].…”

Wire Robots Part II: Dynamics, Control & Application

“…(Visualact AB, 2006). A completely different field is the application of wire robots for rehabilitation which was demonstrated by the system String Man by the Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik (IPK) in Berlin, Germany (Surdilovic et al, 2007). Another prototype for rehabilitation is described in (Frey et al, 2006).…”

Vibration analysis of cable-driven parallel robots based on the dynamic stiffness matrix method

“…They can be relatively easily disassembled, transported, reassembled, and reconfigured 20 which makes them suitable for search and rescue applications [5,6,7]. Last but not least, since cables are flexible, interferences between cables and/or collisions between cables and other objects in the operating environment may cause less accident or damage [8,9], which is notably useful for haptic devices, such as the NEREBOT [10] and the STING-MAN [11]. 25 Due to the compliance of cables, vibrations can become a crucial concern for CDPRs.…”