Toyama Hiroaki, Kawamoto Hiroaki, Sankai Yoshiyuki
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2019 Jul;2019:1645-1650. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857106.
Hemiplegics have difficulty conducting various daily tasks because they must perform such tasks using only their unaffected arm. If a robot arm that can replace their missing upper-limb function is made available, it will greatly contribute to an improvement in their lives. To realize such a robot arm, cooperative actions of the robot arm and the unaffected arm are important. The purpose of this research is to develop a "cybernic robot arm" that can provide work support through cooperation with the unaffected arm for realization of upper-limb tasks in the daily life of hemiplegics. The developed system can detect the external force applied to a gripped object using a tactile force sensor embedded in the robot fingers. The system estimates the motion of the unaffected arm and the user's intention regarding its operation based on the external force, and provides a support action in cooperation with the unaffected arm based on the estimated information. In addition, to confirm the applicability of the developed system, we developed a support function for opening tasks that are difficult for hemiplegics to carry out on their own, and conducted an experiment confirming the applicability of the system. The results confirm that the proposed system provides proper support by cooperating with the user's arm, allowing an opening task to be performed. The developed system will support various upper-limb tasks that are difficult for hemiplegics.
偏瘫患者在进行各种日常任务时会遇到困难，因为他们必须仅用未受影响的手臂来完成这些任务。如果能提供一种可以替代其缺失上肢功能的机器人手臂，将极大地改善他们的生活。为了实现这样的机器人手臂，机器人手臂与未受影响的手臂的协同动作很重要。本研究的目的是开发一种“控制论机器人手臂”，它可以通过与未受影响的手臂协作来提供工作支持，以实现偏瘫患者日常生活中的上肢任务。所开发的系统可以使用嵌入机器人手指中的触觉力传感器检测施加在被握持物体上的外力。该系统基于外力估计未受影响手臂的运动以及用户关于其操作的意图，并根据估计信息与未受影响的手臂协作提供支持动作。此外，为了确认所开发系统的适用性，我们针对偏瘫患者自行完成困难的打开任务开发了一种支持功能，并进行了实验以确认该系统的适用性。结果证实，所提出的系统通过与用户的手臂协作提供了适当的支持，使得打开任务得以执行。所开发的系统将支持偏瘫患者难以完成的各种上肢任务。
