Lessons learned from investigating robotics-based, human-like testing of an upper-body exoskeleton
Publication date
2024-03-15
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Klankers, Marc Kilian
Rudloff, Adrian
Mohammadi, Pouya
Hoffmann, Niclas
Steil, Jochen J.
Organisational unit
Publisher
MDPI
Series or journal
Applied Sciences
ISSN
Periodical volume
14
Periodical issue
6
Article ID
2481
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
Abstract
Assistive devices like exoskeletons undergo extensive testing not least because of their close interaction with humans. Conducting user studies is a time-consuming process that demands expert knowledge, and it is accompanied by challenges such as low repeatability and a potential lack of comparability between studies. Obtaining objective feedback on the exoskeleton’s performance is crucial for developers and manufacturers to iteratively improve the design and development process. This paper contributes to the concept of using robots for objective exoskeleton testing by presenting various approaches to a robotic-based testing platform for upper-body exoskeletons. We outline the necessary requirements for realistically simulating use cases and evaluate different approaches using standard manipulators as robotic motion generators. Three approaches are investigated: (i) Exploiting the anthropomorphic structure of the robotic arm and directly placing it into the exoskeleton. (ii) Utilizing a customized, direct attachment between the robot and exoskeleton. (iii) Attaching a human arm dummy to the robot end effector to simulate a more realistic interface with the exoskeleton. Subsequently, we discuss and compare the results against the aforementioned requirements of a systematic testing platform. Our conclusion emphasizes that achieving objective and realistic testing necessitates highly specialized hardware, algorithms, and further research to address challenging requirements.
Description
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Version
Published version
Access right on openHSU
Metadata only access