An EMG-Based Control for an Upper-Limb Power-Assist Exoskeleton Robot

Many kinds of power-assist robots have been developed in order to assist self-rehabilitation and/or daily life motions of physically weak persons. Several kinds of control methods have been proposed to control the power-assist robots according to user´s motion intention. In this paper, an electromyogram (EMG)-based impedance control method for an upper-limb power-assist exoskeleton robot is proposed to control the robot in accordance with the user´s motion intention. The proposed method is simple, easy to design, humanlike, and adaptable to any user. A neurofuzzy matrix modifier is applied to make the controller adaptable to any users. Not only the characteristics of EMG signals but also the characteristics of human body are taken into account in the proposed method. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated by the experiments.