Biologically-Inspired Control Architecture for an Upper Limb, Intelligent Robotic Orthosis

Biologically-Inspired Control Architecture for an Upper Limb, Intelligent Robotic Orthosis

&nbsp;&nbsp;This paper describes a biologically inspired control architecture for the McKibben actuated limbs of a humanoid robot and its application in an upper limb, intelligent robotic orthosis. The antagonistically driven joints are actuated using a biological control model. This model is observed in the measurement of human muscle elctromyograms (EMG) during reaching movements in the vertical plane. The paradigm uses the summation of tonic and phasic EMG signals to activate the human muscles. The humanoid robot&quot;s muscles, actuated by pressure control, are controlled with feedforward pressure patterns analogous to the tonic and phasic activation in the human model.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;A result of this control paradigm is the realization of actuation with lower stiffness and therefore safer operation for human-humanoid interaction. It is expected that such a motion of the humanoid will closely resemble human motion and will facilitate a more human-friendly human-robot interaction. This leads to our illustration of applying the architecture to a proposed upper limb, robotic orthosis. Such an orthosis will be described in the latter part of this paper.