The technical trend of the exoskeleton robot system for human power assistance

Abstract

The exoskeleton robot system is a brand new type of human-robot cooperation system. It fully combines human intelligence and robot power so that robot intelligence and human operator's power are both enhanced. Therefore, it achieves a high-level performance that neither robots nor humans could achieve separately. This paper describes the basic exoskeleton concepts from biological systems to human-robot intelligent systems. It is followed by an overview of the development history of exoskeleton systems and their two main applications: human power assistance and human power augmentation. Besides the key technologies in exoskeleton systems, the research is presented from several viewpoints of the biomechanical design, system structure modeling, human-robot interaction, and control strategy.