Adaptive Perception-Assist to Various Tasks for an Upper-Limb Power-Assist Exoskeleton Robot

In the case of some elderly whose motor ability is deteriorated, the environment perception ability is sometimes deteriorated also. In order to deal with that problem, the power-assist robot with the perception-assist, which assists not only the user's motion but also the user's interaction with an environment, has been proposed. The power-assist robot with the perception-assist has some sensors in order to monitor the interaction between the user and the environment. The robot tries to modify the user's motion automatically during the power-assist if the robot recognizes any problems in the user's motion. A human has a dexterous hand with many DOFs, and performs tasks while using many tools in the hand. Since many kinds of tools are used in daily activities, the undesired motion such as a risky behavior to the person is different between the tasks or tools. From these reasons, when the power-assist robot carries out the perception-assist, the robot needs to perform the perception-assist based on the user's motion and the grasped tool by the user. However, it is not realistic to prepare the perception-assist required for every tool or task because there are many kinds of tools and tasks. In this paper, the perception-assist for an upper-limb power-assist robot is discussed. The robot learns the properly required perception-assist based on EMG signals. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been evaluated by the performing experiments.