[home] [Personal Program] [Help]

---

Session: Poster session I
Session starts: Thursday 24 January, 15:00

---

Arvid Keemink (BME UTwente)
Arno Stienen (University of Twente)
J.F. Schorsch (University of Twente)
D.A. Abbink ()
Frans van der Helm (TU Delft)
Herman van der Kooij ()

Abstract:
In industrial settings there is the challenge to lift heavy objects from machine to machine. The negative aspects of current industrial weight support systems - lack of flexibility and operation speed - makes employees ignore the systems and perform the tasks manually. Some of these employees start experiencing physical problems in the elbow, shoulder and lower back after years of work. This motivates development of new flexible and easy lifting supports. The goal of this project is to realize a breakthrough in physically support humans with heavy lifting, by designing a shared-control assistive human-machine interface that is fast to get into, intuitive and user-friendly. The aim is to show that by using haptic shared control, the force to the operator can be designed based on his/her motion control properties, leading to more intuitive assistance. Using the philosophy of force feedback from shared control to avoid objects in the surroundings, inherently provides stability, damping and smooth movements. The full system is still under development. Lifting will be facilitated by using a two-part system; a lifting system to generate the supporting force and a dexterous manipulation device for intuitive dexterous manipulation of the load. Force feedback signals from a slave gripper will give proper grasp sensation and slippage information to the operator. A master device designed for the human fingers and hand will display these forces to the operator to increase awareness and increase lifting functionality and stability. Designs will be such that the system will be of minimal necessary complexity and degrees of freedom (i.e. in the slave fingers and master device) to be robust and powerful in the lifting task and the handling of the load. Actuation of the lifting system is an important challenge, often exoskeletons become bulky because of the actuators required to generate the power needed to lift heavy objects. To tackle this, an additional innovation is envisioned: to use balanced springs to mechanically compensate for some of the load and to offer a highly dynamic and flexible load support.