• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.1-6
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• 2009

Recently, importance of the rehabilitation of hand pathologies as well as the development of high-technology hand robot has been increased. The biomechanical model of hand is indispensable due to the difficulty of direct measurement of muscle forces and joint forces in hands. In this study, a three-dimensional biomechanical model of four fingers including three joints and ten muscles in each finger was developed and a mathematical relationship between neural commands and finger forces which represents the enslaving effect and the force deficit effect was proposed. When pressing a plate under the flexed posture, the muscle forces and the joint forces were predicted by the optimization technique. The results showed that the major activated muscles were flexion muscles (flexor digitorum profundus, radial interosseous, and ulnar interosseous). In addition, it was found that the antagonistic muscles were also activated rather than the previous models, which is more realistic phenomenon. The present model has considered the interaction among fingers, thus can be more powerful while developing a robot hand that can totally control the multiple fingers like human.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.771-782
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• 2017

This paper describes the development of a wearable robot to assist ankle power for the elderly. Previously developed wearable robots have generally used motors and gears to assist muscle power during walking. However, the combination of motor and reduction gear is heavy and has limitations on the simultaneous control of stiffness and torque due to the friction of the gear reducer unlike human muscles. Therefore, in this study, Mckibben pneumatic muscle, which is lighter, safer, and more powerful than an electric motor with gear, was used to assist ankle joint. Antagonistic actuation using a pair of pneumatic muscles assisted the power of the soleus muscles and tibialis anterior muscles used for the pitching motion of the ankle joint, and the model parameters of the antagonistic actuator were experimentally derived using a muscle test platform. To recognize the wearer's walking intention, foot load and ankle torque were calculated by measuring the pressure and the center of pressure of the foot using force and linear displacement sensors, and the stiffness and the torque of the pneumatic muscle joint were then controlled by the calculated ankle torque and foot load. Finally, the performance of the developed ankle power assistive robot was experimentally verified by measuring EMG signals during walking experiments on a treadmill.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.419-424
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• 2017

Twisted string actuators (TSAs) are tendon-driven actuators that provide high transmission ratios. Twisting a string reduces the length of the string and generates a linear motion of the actuators. In particular, TSAs have characteristic properties (compliance) that are advantageous for operations that need to interact with the external environment. This compliance has the advantage of being robust to disturbance in force control, but it is disadvantageous for precise control because the modeling is inaccurate. In fact, many previous studies have covered the TSA model, but the model is still inadequate to be applied to actual robot control. In this paper, we introduce a modified variable radius model of TASs and experimentally demonstrate that the modified variable radius model is correct compared to the conventional variable radius string model. In addition, the elastic characteristics of the TSAs are discussed along with the experimental results.