In order to help everyday life of physically weak people, we are developing exoskeletal robots for human (especially for physically weak people) motion support. In this paper, we propose a one degree-of-freedom (1 DOF) exoskeletal robot and its control system to support the human elbow motion. The proposed controller controls the angular position and impedance of the exoskeletal robot system based on biological signals that reflect the human subject's intention. The skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the generated wrist force by the human subject during the elbow motion have been fused and used as input information of the controller. In order to make the robot flexible enough to deal with vague biological signal such as EMG, fuzzy neuro control has been applied to the controller. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed exoskeletal robot system.

We have been developing exoskeletal motion assistance robots for human motion support to help physically weak persons. Since elbow motion is one of the simplest and most important motion in daily activities, we have developed a exoskeletal robot for human elbow motion assistance. In this system, the angular position and impedance of the exoskeletal robot are controlled by multiple fuzzy-neuro controllers. Skin surface electromyography (EMG) signals and wrist force by the human subject during elbow joint motion have been used as input information for the controller. Since the activation of working muscles tends to vary with the human subject's upper arm posture, we propose an interface that cancels out the effect of posture changes of the human subject's upper arm. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed interface.

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