A novel 3-DOF optical force sensor for wearable robotic arm

Abstract

This paper presents a novel 3-DOF optical force sensor for the wearable robotic arm. Precise sensing of human motion is still a challenge. As human motion detection sensors are expected to generate the real time data, with simultaneous measurement of multiple degrees of freedom. The optical sensing is considered to be standard for monitoring the human motion. The optical sensor is consists of high speed camera with integrated DSP (Digital Signal Processor). The DSP use to detect the changes in the sequence of frames to calculate the direction and displacement of its motion in a plane. On the other hand optical sensor eliminates the requirement of being in contact with the subject. Hand is the end-effecter of the arm and can be controlled by a 3-DOF (degree of freedom) shoulder, 2-DOF elbow and 2-DOF wrist joint. In this paper we present a new technique to measure the human's hand movement in 3 dimensions translation frame. An intelligent computational method for this sensory system to measure the applied force is also developed. The optical force sensor was calibrated and then several experiments were conducted to check the feasibility of sensory system with the wearable robotic arm.

Research on a Multi-Axis Wrist Force Sensor with Double Bending Beams

“…Wrist force sensor is one of the important parts of intelligent manipulator. Intelligent manipulator must have functions of force sensing in order to ensure high location precision and can finish the task of testing the parameters of force, which easily do the force and compliance control [1][2] . Wrist sensor is not only a kind of mechanical hand sensor but also a strain sensor.…”

A self-decoupled three-axis force sensor for measuring the wheel force

“…Currently, research on the multipledimensional force sensor focuses mainly on mechanical hand and wrist force sensors. [7][8][9][10][11][12] Also, because of some difficult factors, including special and complicated conditions of use, couplings between the dimensions and the complex calibration process, fewer researchers pay attention to research on WFTs. Because of the increasing importance of the wheel force, now some commercial WFTs are available, including the 5400 series multiple-axis WFT (PCB Group), the LW series sixdimensional WFT (Michigan Scientific Corporation), the S6HT WFT (Kistler Group, Switzerland), SWIFT (MTS Systems Corporation) and the SLW-NC WFT (Tokyo Sokki Kenkyujo Co., Ltd).…”