A WEARABLE ARM ORTHOSIS FOR PASSIVE GRAVITY COMPENSATION TO SUPPORT HUMAN ARM REHABILITATION

Ganji, Chetan and Kumar, R Prasanth (2019) A WEARABLE ARM ORTHOSIS FOR PASSIVE GRAVITY COMPENSATION TO SUPPORT HUMAN ARM REHABILITATION. Masters thesis, Indian institute of technology Hyderabad.

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Abstract

For people having muscular weakness obstructs them from performing daily activities, social participation and being independent, there is a scope to build an external attachment mechanism called arm orthosis to make person move the arms freely need for an exoskeletal mechanism that allows the person’s movement of their arms around spontaneously and with ease. Numerous studies have been performed from the decades to till date and provided a multiple solution on gravity compensation. One among them is the traditional active compensation mechanism used in robot or the machinery in applying the required torque at joints through large actuators and requires a considerable energy for working, through this approach a dynamic balancing can be achieved at the expense of high-energy input and weight. In this study, the optimum method has been developed to passively compensate the gravity by means of implementing elastic bands and indeed this stored elastic energy will be used to compensate the gravity. The objective of this study was to design a simple passive gravity-balanced arm orthosis for patients with weaker arm strength and neuromuscular diseases and to aid these people in performing the daily activities by using this arm orthosis with ease has this is light in weight and due to less complexity in operating. Modeling of the parts are done in Solid Works by measuring the adult human hand lengths and Finite Element Analysis study has been performed to ensure the rigidness of the structure. All the individual modelled parts are 3D printed using PLA material for its light weight to strength ratio and ease of manufacturing and then the parts are assembled. The assembled Arm Orthosis can be mounted on to a widely used wheel chairs and attached to human hand at fore arm support and uses the elastic bands at the fore-arm and shoulder to counter the effects of the gravity and incorporates the four degrees of freedom for the stress-free shoulder and elbow joint movements in the available design space.

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