Performance evaluations of hand and forearm support system

This paper reports support effects of an exoskeleton system for activities of a hand and an upper limb of a healthy person. The support system augments human forces of a hand, a wrist joint and an elbow joint based on bioelectric potential of each muscle so that the upper limb could be assisted by the exoskeleton with a certain rate of wearer´s force. Actuators in the assistive system are replaced with powerful ones to supports human hand, wrist and elbow activities with larger force and torque. Through experiments it was confirmed that a wearer receives physical support from the system for activities of a hand, a wrist and an elbow joint and then we evaluate rate of assistance by comparing the magnitude of the bioelectric potential between under a supported phase and under an unsupported phase.