Development of Meal Assistance Orthosis for Disabled Persons with Human Intention Extraction through EOG Signals

A meal assistance orthosis is developed for elderly and/or disable persons who have partly or completely lost the ability of moving their upper limbs by themselves independently. The meal assistance orthosis supports the disabled persons and brings foods from dishes to their mouth by their own forearms. Human intention, i.e., which foods they want to eat, can be extracted from electrooculogram (EOG) signals which are measured by electrodes on the face. Position control is adopted for control strategy of the meal assistance orthosis, and forcefree control which can realize flexible motion of the meal assistance orthosis is adopted in order to avoid the meal assistance orthosis injure the subject. The effectiveness of the developed meal assistance orthosis is assured by experimental works on normal persons