Development of a 6DOF Exoskeleton Robot for Human Upper-Limb Motion Assist

The upper-limb motions are essential to perform the daily activities. This paper proposes a six degree of freedom (6DOF) upper-limb motion power assist exoskeleton robot for shoulder vertical and horizontal flexion/extension motion, elbow flexion/extension motion, forearm supination/pronation motion, wrist flexion/extension motion and wrist radial/ulnar deviation motion. The axes offset of wrist joint and the moving center of rotation (CR) of shoulder joint are applied in the hardware design of the exoskeleton robot. The robot is named as SUEFUL-6 to indicate 6DOF Saga University Exoskeleton For Upper-Limb. The paper describes the anatomy details of upper-limb towards the development of the exoskeleton robot and the hardware design of the exoskeleton robot. Experiments have been performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the hardware design of the proposed exoskeleton robot.