Determination of the Human Arm Stiffness Efficiency with a Two Antagonist Muscles Model

In the last years, due the working age increase, more and more attention was given to the use of exoskeleton for industrial applications, such to reduce fatigue and the operator effort. Since in industrial practice, stiffening the joint is a requested action for those operations in which precision is needed, an exoskeleton whose stiffness could be controlled by the operator would reduce the operator discomfort. In this paper we attempt to study the stiffness of the elbow on which two muscles act as agonist-antagonist and we proposed an estimation of the efficiency.

[1]  Nikolaos G. Tsagarakis,et al.  Tele-Impedance based stiffness and motion augmentation for a knee exoskeleton device , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[2]  Wendy M Murray,et al.  Muscle short-range stiffness can be used to estimate the endpoint stiffness of the human arm. , 2011, Journal of neurophysiology.

[3]  E. Bizzi,et al.  Neural, mechanical, and geometric factors subserving arm posture in humans , 1985, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[4]  Vincent Bonnet,et al.  Ergonomic contribution of ABLE exoskeleton in automotive industry , 2014 .

[5]  A. Hill.  The mechanics of active muscle , 1953, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B - Biological Sciences.

[6]  Stefano Pastorelli,et al.  Accuracy evaluation of a new stereophotogrammetry-based functional method for joint kinematic analysis in biomechanics , 2014, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part H, Journal of engineering in medicine.

[7]  Valentina Agostini,et al.  Does texting while walking really affect gait in young adults? , 2015, Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

[8]  Angelo Cangelosi,et al.  Novel Hybrid Adaptive Controller for Manipulation in Complex Perturbation Environments , 2015, PloS one.

[9]  Jeremy D Wong,et al.  The central nervous system does not minimize energy cost in arm movements. , 2010, Journal of neurophysiology.

[10]  Alan M. Wilson,et al.  Intensity of activation and timing of deactivation modulate elastic energy storage and release in a pennate muscle and account for gait-specific initiation of limb protraction in the horse , 2009, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[11]  Laura Gastaldi,et al.  A Combined Robotic and Cognitive Training for Locomotor Rehabilitation: Evidences of Cerebral Functional Reorganization in Two Chronic Traumatic Brain Injured Patients , 2011, Front. Hum. Neurosci..

[12]  Yoshiyuki Sankai,et al.  Power assist control for walking aid with HAL-3 based on EMG and impedance adjustment around knee joint , 2002, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[13]  Scott L. Delp,et al.  A Model of the Upper Extremity for Simulating Musculoskeletal Surgery and Analyzing Neuromuscular Control , 2005, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[14]  H. Gomi,et al.  Multijoint muscle regulation mechanisms examined by measured human arm stiffness and EMG signals. , 1999, Journal of neurophysiology.

[15]  Stefano Pastorelli,et al.  Evaluation of functional methods for human movement modelling. , 2015, Acta of bioengineering and biomechanics.

[16]  Marcin Basiaga,et al.  Technological capabilities of surface layers formation on implant made of Ti-6Al-4V ELI alloy. , 2015, Acta of bioengineering and biomechanics.

[17]  Nikolaos G. Tsagarakis,et al.  Tele-impedance: Teleoperation with impedance regulation using a body–machine interface , 2012, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[18]  Jacob Rosen,et al.  A myosignal-based powered exoskeleton system , 2001, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part A.

[19]  N. Hogan.  Adaptive control of mechanical impedance by coactivation of antagonist muscles , 1984 .

[20]  Francisco J. Valero Cuevas,et al.  Muscle Synergies Heavily Influence the Neural Control of Arm Endpoint Stiffness and Energy Consumption , 2016, PLoS Comput. Biol..

[21]  Leonard O'Sullivan,et al.  Safety and Risk Management in Designing for the Lifecycle of an Exoskeleton: A Novel Process Developed in the Robo-Mate Project , 2015 .