Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864

www.springerlink.com/content/1738-494x(Print)/1976-3824(Online)
DOI 10.1007/s12206-018-0136-y

Design and evaluation of a 7-DOF cable-driven upper limb exoskeleton†

Feiyun Xiao1,2, Yongsheng Gao1,*, Yong Wang2, Yanhe Zhu1 and Jie Zhao1
1
State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Harbin, 150006, China
2
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology (HFUT), Hefei, 230009, China

(Manuscript Received March 18, 2017; Revised August 19, 2017; Accepted November 1, 2017)

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Abstract

This paper presents a seven degrees of freedom cable-driven upper limb exoskeleton (CABXLexo-7), which is compact, lightweight,
and comfortable for post-stroke patients. To achieve the compactness of exoskeleton, two types of cable-driven differential mechanisms
were designed. The cable-conduit mechanisms were applied to transmit the power of motors mounted on the backboard to the corre-
sponding joints, then the whole weight of the exoskeleton could be light to ensure a comfortable motion assistance. In the course of ex-
periments, the surface electromyography signals of major muscles related with the movements of upper limb were collected to evaluate
the assistant ability of exoskeleton. The experimental results showed that the activation levels of corresponding muscles were reduced by
using the seven degrees of freedom cable-driven upper limb exoskeleton in the course of rehabilitation, and it demonstrated that the exo-
skeleton can provide effective movements assistance to the post-stroke patients.
Keywords: Cable-driven; Upper limb exoskeleton; Differential mechanism; Cable-conduit; sEMG
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that the differential mechanism can be applied to form a cou-

1. Introduction
pling motion by combining two independent motions. The
Recently, stroke has become a serious disease which causes differential mechanism is similar with the parallel mechanism
a great inconvenience for patients’ daily life [1]. Motion dis- but it has larger workspace than the parallel mechanism. In
order, partial paralysis, and pain make the patients be unable Ref. [17], we proposed a 6-DOF upper limb exoskeleton
to perform most Activities of daily living (ADL) [2-4]. In based on the differential mechanism. However, the weight of
addition, it brings a great suffering to them. To assist them, the exoskeleton was large and it was not compact. Further-
rehabilitation training plays a vital role in the course of ther- more, the differential mechanism in gear style was not com-
apy. The traditional manually assisted therapy needs the pro- fortable for patients.
fessional nurse, which is inconvenient and expensive [5]. The weight of the driving motors is a great burden for hu-
Therefore, the numbers of training for many patients are often man upper limb and increases the total weight to be driven.
limited. How to avoid placing the driving motors on the main body of
To solve this problem, many upper limb exoskeleton sys- exoskeleton and transmit the power of motors to the corre-
tems have been developed to assist the patients over the years sponding joint is an active issue [18-26]. In Refs. [22, 23],
[6-27]. Most of the existing exoskeleton systems such as Ying Mao et.al designed a cable-driven upper limb exoskele-
ArMin [6], RUPERT [7] and CADEN-7 [8] are the serial ton (CAREX) by replacing the rigid links with the light
robot mechanisms. In addition, some are the parallel robot weight cuffs. In addition, all joints were driven by cables
mechanisms such as BONES [15] and RiceWrist [16]. The which transmitted the power of motors mounted on the back-
serial mechanism has larger workspace than the parallel board to the corresponding joints. In Ref. [24], Ball et al. pro-
mechanism. However, the rigidity of the serial mechanism posed an adjustable robotic exoskeleton called MEDARM and
will be bad if the number of Degrees of freedom (DOF) is the power of motors were also transmitted by the cables. The
large. The rigidity of the parallel mechanism is stronger than weight of CAREX and MEDARM were light, however, some
the serial mechanism but its workspace is relatively smaller big brackets should be fixed on the corresponding joints of
than the serial mechanism. According to Ref. [17], it is known exoskeleton to support the cables.
To address these limitations, a compact 7-DOF cable-driven
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 13946036260, Fax.: +86 86413392 upper limb exoskeleton is designed in this paper. It aims at
E-mail address: Gaoys@hit.edu.cn, xfymusic@163.com
†
Recommended by Associate Editor Kyoungchul Kong achieving a comfortable and convenient movements assis-
© KSME & Springer 2018 tance for post-stroke patients. Compared with traditional exo-
856 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864

skeletons, the main benefits of the exoskeleton can be summa-

rized as follow: 1) It doesn't need to drive the masses of mo-
tors by using the cable-conduit transmission mechanism so as
to reduce the required power; 2) the compactness and ergo-
nomics of the exoskeleton are improved by adopting two new-
ly designed cable-driven differential mechanisms with bilat-
eral structure; 3) the reliability of the cable-driven mechanism
is improved by applying the newly designed tension device
which can provide an adjustable pre-tightening force. To eval-
uate the performance of motion assistance, we designed an
experiment based on the surface electromyography (sEMG)
signals. The experiments reaching targets on the panel frame
with different motion modalities were conducted by six sub-
jects. Considering that the sEMG signals can reflect the mus-
cle force which quantitatively describes the provided power
from human. Therefore, the sEMG signals of corresponding
muscles in different motion modalities were measured to
evaluate the motion assistance performance of exoskeleton in
this work.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Sec. 2 mainly
introduces the mechanical design of this 7-DOF cable-driven
upper limb exoskeleton. Sec. 3 introduces the experimental
set-up which is applied to evaluate the ability of movement
assistance of the exoskeleton. The kinematic analysis is intro-
duced in Sec. 4. Sec. 5 shows the experimental results. Sec. 6
is the discussion and conclusions.
Fig. 1. (a) The distribution of DOF of the 7-DOF cable-driven upper
limb exoskeleton (CABXLexo-7); (b) CAD model of the exoskeleton;
2. Mechanical design (c) the prototype of the exoskeleton system; (d) CAD model of the
shoulder joint part; (e) CAD model of the elbow joint part; (f) CAD
2.1 The overview of the exoskeleton
model of the wrist joint part.
In general, the human upper limb mainly consists of seven
DOF including shoulder flexion/extension, shoulder abduc- driven mechanism should be tensioned, a new tension device
tion/adduction, shoulder internal/external rotation, elbow flex- is designed and it will be introduced in Sec. 2.4. Considering
ion/extension, forearm supination/pronation, wrist flex- that the weight of motor will increase the required driving
ion/extension and wrist radial deviation/ulnar deviation. Fig. 1 power, the cable-conduit mechanisms are applied to transmit
illustrates the overall design of the 7-DOF cable-driven upper the power of motors mounted on the backboard to the corre-
limb exoskeleton (CABXLexo-7). The distribution of DOF is sponding joint in this work. In addition, the encoders (Mag-
shown in Fig. 1(a), and the range of exoskeleton motion satis- netic absolute encoder with 4096 steps per revolution from
fies the range of human motion (Table 1) [17, 28]. The load PWB encoders company Inc.) are used to record the actual
capacities of shoulder joint should be the largest, then, the joint angles.
power of motors corresponding to the shoulder joint are
200 W (Maxon DC motor EC-4pole 200 W) and others' are
2.2 The shoulder joint part
100 W (Maxon DC motor EC-4pole 100 W). The main mate-
rial of the exoskeleton is aluminium alloy, and the weight to According to Table 1, it is known that the movement range
be driven is 3.75 kg. Fig. 1(c) shows the prototype of the exo- of human shoulder joint is the largest. It means that the work-
skeleton system. The CAD models of the shoulder joint part, space of human shoulder joint is also the largest. The sche-
the elbow joint part and the wrist joint part are shown in Figs. matic diagram of the shoulder joint part is illustrated in Fig.
1(d)-(f), respectively. A differential mechanism is designed to 2(a), and it is consisted of two parts. The first part is a differ-
achieve the shoulder flexion/extension motion and the shoul- ential structure driving the upper limb of human to achieve the
der abduction/adduction motion, and the detailed introduction flexion/extension motion and the abduction/adduction motion
is discussed in Sec. 2.2. The elbow joint part of the exoskele- of shoulder joint. The second part is a traditional serial struc-
ton is designed based on another type of differential mecha- ture which is corresponding to the shoulder internal/external
nism which is introduced in Sec. 2.3. The motion of wrist joint rotation motion. The angular velocity of the shoulder inter-
and the shoulder internal/external rotation motion are achieved nal/external rotation motion is represented with wscz. Com-
by applying the traditional serial mechanism. As the cable- pared the structure of this shoulder joint part with the serial
 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864 857

Table 1. The range of motion.

Movement range of Movement range of

Degrees of freedom
human exoskeleton
Shoulder flexion (SF)/
150o~180o/40o~50o 165o/40o
extension (SE)
Shoulder abduction (SAB)/
180o/0o 180o/0o
adduction (SAD)
Shoulder internal (SIR)/
70o~95o/40o~70o 60o/60o
external rotation (SER)
Elbow flexion (EF)/
135o~140o/0o 120o/0o
extension (EE)
Forearm supination (FS)/ (a) (b)
85o~90o/70o~90o 80o/80o
pronation (FP)
Wrist flexion (WF)/
73o/70o 60o/60o
extension (WE)
Wrist radial deviation (WRD)/
27o/27o 27o/27o
ulnar deviation (WUD)

structure, this structure is more compact. In addition, the mo-

tors driving the first part could be placed on the backboard
directly to decrease the whole weight of the shoulder joint part
(Fig. 1(c)). In this section, we mainly introduce the differential
mechanism used in the first part.
The center of shoulder joint is set to be O1. The differential
(c)
structure designed in this section includes the driving link, the
driving wheel, and the planet wheel. The corresponding parts Fig. 2. (a) The schematic diagram of the shoulder joint part; (b) the
in the exoskeleton are shown in Fig. 2(c). The planet wheel schematic diagram of the wire rope transmission mechanism, the red
line and the green line represent a pair of wire ropes; (c) the CAD
can not only rotate around itself but also rotate around the model illustrating the actual way of installing the wire ropes.
driving wheel, and the corresponding angular velocities are
represented with wscy and wscx, respectively. The radiuses of
the driving wheel and the planet wheel are Rsb and Rsc, respec- Combining with Eqs. (2) and (3), Eq. (1) can be re-
tively (Fig. 2(b)). The angular velocities of the driving link, expressed as follow.
the driving wheel and planet wheel are wsa, wsb and wsc, re-
spectively. The angular velocity of the planet wheel relative to ì wscx = wsa
the driving link is represented by wasc, which is equal to wscy. In ï
í Rsb (4)
ï wscy = wsc = R ( wsb - wsa ) = tan (q )( wsb - wsa ) .
a
addition, it is obvious that wscx is equal to wsa. Then the follow-
î sc
ing equations can be obtained.

ìï wscx = wsa The traditional gear transmission structure is replaced with

í a
(1) the cable-driven transmission system shown in Figs. 2(b) and
ïî wscy = wsc . (c). The actual way of installing the wire ropes is shown in Fig.
2(c). The cable is a flexible body which can only achieve one-
To obtain wasc, we can virtually add a motion represented way transmission, and it indicates that each DOF of the cable-
with –wsa. Then the absolute linear velocity of point D on the driven mechanism should be accomplished by two cables. In
planet wheel represented by v asDc should be equal to the Figs. 2(b) and (c), the red line and the green line represent a
absolute linear velocity of point D on the driving wheel b pair of wire ropes, and the wire copes are pull by the tension
represented by vasDb. The relationship is expressed as follow. device which provides the pre-tightening force.
a
vsDc a
= vsDb = Rsb ( wsb - wsa ) . (2) 2.3 The elbow joint part

The angular velocity of the planet wheel relative to the driv- Considering the kinematical characteristics of the human
ing link is obtained as follow. elbow joint, a differential mechanism illustrated in Fig. 3(a) is
designed to achieve the motion of elbow. The motion of the
a
vsDc planet wheel will drive the forearm of human to rotate with
wsca = . (3)
Rsc the elbow joint, and it is controlled by the first driving wheel
858 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 4. The projection of angular velocities.

Fig. 3. (a) The schematic diagram of the elbow joint part; (b) the sche-
When wea < 0, web > 0,
a b
matic diagram of the wire rope transmission mechanism, the red line ïì wecx = - wea + wec cos d1 = web - wec cos d 3
and the green line represent a pair of wire ropes of the first driving í a b
(9)
wheel, the magenta line and the blue line represent a pair of wire ropes ïî wecy = 0 - wec sin d1 = 0 - wec sin d 3 .
of the second driving wheel; (c) the CAD model illustrating the actual
way of installing the wire ropes.
When the directions of wea and web are same, waec and wbec
can be obtained based on Eqs. (6) and (7).
and the second driving wheel. The schematic diagram of the
wire rope transmission mechanism is shown in Fig. 3(b). The ì a wea - web
red line and the green line represent a pair of wire ropes of the ï wec = cos d + cot d sin d
ï 1 3 1
first driving wheel, and the magenta line and the blue line í if wea web ³ 0 . (10)
ï wb = web - wea
represent a pair of wire ropes of the second driving wheel. The
ïî ec cos d 3 + cot d1 sin d 3
radiuses of the first driving wheel, the second driving wheel,
and the planet wheel are Rea, Reb and Rec, respectively. In addi-
tion, the corresponding angular velocities are wea, web and wec, When the directions of wea and web are different, waec and wbec
respectively. The angular velocities of the planet wheel rela- can be obtained based on Eqs. (8) and (9).
tive to the first driving wheels and the second driving wheel
are represented by waec and wbec, respectively. According to the ì a wea + web
angular velocity composition theorem of intersecting axes, we ï wec = cos d + cot d sin d
ï 1 3 1
can get the following equation. í if wea web £ 0 . (11)
ï wb = web + wea
uuur uuur uuuar uuur uuubr ïî ec cos d 3 + cot d1 sin d 3
wec = wea + wec = web + wec . (5)

By projecting the vector equation Eq. (5) to x axis and y Then we can get the following equations.
axis, wecx and wecy can be obtained based on Fig. 4.
ì æ wea - web ö
When wea > 0, web>0, ï wecx = ± çç wea - ÷
ìï wecx = wea - weca cos d1 = web - wecb cos d 3 ï è 1 + cot d 3 tan d1 ÷ø
í if wea web ³ 0 (12)
í (6)
a b ï w = ± wea - web
ïî wecy = 0 + wec sin d1 = 0 - wec sin d 3 . ï ecy
î cot d1 + cot d 3
When wea < 0, web < 0, ì æ wea + web ö
ï wecx = ± çç wea - ÷
ìï wecx = - wea + weca cos d1 = - web + wecb cos d 3 ï è 1 + cot d 3 tan d1 ÷ø
í a b
(7) í if wea web £ 0 . (13)
ïî wecy = 0 - wec sin d1 = 0 + wec sin d 3 . ï w = ± wea + web
ï ecy cot d1 + cot d 3
î
When wea > 0, web < 0,
ìï wecx = wea - weca cos d1 = - web + wecb cos d 3 According to Figs. 3(a) and (b), the relationship between δ1,
í a b
(8)
ïî wecy = 0 + wec sin d1 = 0 + wec sin d 3 . δ3 and Rea, Reb, Rec can be expressed as follow.
 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864
(a) (b)
Fig. 5. (a) The schematic diagram of the wrist joint part; (b) the CAD
model of the wrist joint part.
ì Rea = Reb , d1 = d 3
ï
í Rec
ïcot d1 = cot d 3 = R .
î ea
If the direction of wea or web is opposite with the direction
shown in Fig. 3(a), the value of wea or web in Eqs. (12) and
(13) is negative. The direction of wecy in view H will be
clockwise if the value of wecy is positive.
Then, Eqs. (12) and (13) can be re-expressed as follow.
ì 1
ï wecx = 2 ( wea + web )
ï
í (15)
ï wecy = Rea ( wea - web ) .
ïî 2 Rec
The traditional gear transmission structure is replaced with
the cable transmission system. The actual way of installing the
wire ropes is shown in Fig. 3(c).
2.4 The wrist joint part
Considering that the wrist joint is relatively smaller than the
shoulder joint and the elbow joint, the differential mechanism
may be not compact when it used to be the wrist joint part.
Therefore, we consider to apply the serial mechanism to the
wrist joint as illustrated in Fig. 5. The wrist joint motion in-
cludes the motion of wrist flexion/extension and the motion of
wrist radial deviation/ulnar deviation. Two encoders are in-
stalled on the corresponding joint to measure the actual joint
motion.
2.5 The tension devices design
The pre-tightening force plays a vital role for the cable-
driven mechanism and it will affect the performance of the
cable-driven mechanism. In the course of movement, it is
known that the pulling force of the wire rope will change
within a certain range. Therefore, we design a tension device
being able to adjust the pre-tightening force with the pulling
force of the wire rope. The tension device of the exoskeleton
is illustrated in Fig. 6. The screw in Fig. 6 can be twisted to
move the regulating block which can tense the wire rope. The
locking block is used to fixed the rope end. Although the regu-
859
(a) (b)
Fig. 6. (a) The schematic diagram of the tension devices of exoskele-
ton; (b) the prototype of the tension devices of exoskeleton.
(14)
Fig. 7. The schematic diagram of the tele-transmission mechanism.
lating block can be used to tense the wire rope, it is rigid
which will affect the performance of the wire rope. Therefore,
we improve it by applying two springs to provide the opposite
forces F1 and F2 and the stiffness of spring is selected based
on the range of pulling force of the wire rope. The mechanical
equation is given as follow.
F =F1 +F2 =2k Dx (16)
where k is the elastic coefficient of spring and ∆x represents
the length variation of the spring.
2.6 The cable-conduit transmission mechanism
When the driving motor directly drives the joint, it will in-
crease the whole weight of the exoskeleton on the human up-
per limb. In addition, the installation of the driving motor will
occupy some space which will reduce the actual joint work-
space. Furthermore, the weight of the driving motor will in-
crease the load to be driven by other motors. Then the power
of motor will be large which makes the driving motor to be
chosen will be more heavier.
In this work, we design a tele-transmission mechanism
based on the cable-conduit transmission mechanism. The
schematic diagram of the tele-transmission mechanism is
shown in Fig. 7. The corresponding joint is driven by the ca-
bles (Wirerope with 1.5 mm diameter) and the conduits (Bow-
den cables with 5 mm diameter) provide a pathway for the
cables. The tighteners are used to adjust the length of the wire
rope and provide the pre-tightening force. The part illustrated
by the dashed box is used to adjust the length of the wire rope.
Considering the range of motion of the corresponding joint,
the whole length of this area should be larger than the range of
the joint motion.
d1 + d 2 ³ j r2 (17)
860 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864

Table 2. The Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and values.

Link i θi αi li di Range of θi
1 θ1 90o 0 0 50o ~255o
o
2 θ2 90 0 0 -90 o ~90 o
3 θ3 90o 0 d3 30 o ~150 o
o
4 θ4 90 0 0 0o ~120 o
o
5 θ5 90 0 d5 100 o ~260 o
6 θ6 90o 0 0 -117 o ~-63o
o
Fig. 8. The tele-transmission mechanism of exoskeleton. 7 θ7 0 l7 d7 -60 o ~60 o

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 9. The connecting rod coordinates of the exoskeleton.
Fig. 10. The workspace of the exoskeleton.

where d1 and d2 represent the length of the wire rope, r2 means

the radius of the corresponding joint, j is the range of joint workspace of the exoskeleton is obtained as shown in Fig. 10.
motion. Fig. 8 shows the tele-transmission mechanism According to Fig. 10, we know that the workspace of the exo-
mounted on the backboard. skeleton is large enough for subjects to accomplish almost all
motions in daily life.

3. Kinematic analysis
4. Experiment
The connecting rod coordinates of the exoskeleton shown in
Fig. 9 are established by the Denavit-Hartenberg method, and In this section, the evaluation experiment of the movements
the corresponding parameters and values are listed in Table 2. assistance of the exoskeleton is introduced. Six healthy sub-
The range of θi listed in Table 2 is obtained according to Table jects (23~45 years old, male and female, named as A~F) were
1. By calculating the kinematic equation as expressed in Eq. participate in this experiment conducted in our laboratory. The
(18), we can obtained the workspace of the exoskeleton. subject sit behind the target panel frame, and the center of the
panel frame was coincide with the pen point when the upper
é r11 r12 r13 px ù limb of the subject was parallel with the ground (Fig. 11). The
ê ú subjects were asked to move from the center of the pattern to
r r22 r23 py ú
0
T7 = 0 A1 1 A2 2 A3 3 A4 4 A5 5 A6 6 A7 = ê 21
ê r31 r32 r33 pz ú each of the 12 targets on the pattern and move back from each
ê ú target to the center. The pattern was fixed on the target panel
ëê 0 0 0 1 ûú
(18) frame. The 12 targets were arranged in a clock-like fashion,
écq1 0 sq1 0 ù écq 7 - sq 7 0 l7 cq 7 ù
and the distance between the center and the target was 18 cm.
ê ú ê ú
sq 0 -cq1 0 ú ê sq 7 cq 7 0 l7 sq 7 ú A metronome was applied here to guide the frequency of mo-
=ê 1 ... .
ê0 1 0 0ú ê 0 0 1 d7 ú tion, and the frequency was 60 beats per minute (bpm). The
ê ú ê ú
êë 0 0 0 1 úû êë 0 0 0 1 úû metronome rhythm was about 0.18 m/s which was similar
with the reaching speed of post-stroke patients and the healthy
When we set the values of d3, d5, d7 and l7 (d3 = 270 mm, d5 subjects could easily imitate the patients’ motion in a natural
= 250 mm, d7 = 30 mm, l7 = 120 mm), the corresponding way [29].
 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864
Table 3. The sEMG channels and the corresponding muscles.
sEMG channels Muscles
Ch.1 Pectoralis major-clavicular
Ch.2 Infraspinatus
Ch.3 Deltoid-anterior
Ch.4 Deltoid-posterior
Ch.5 Biceps
Ch.6 Triceps
Fig. 11. The experimental setup.
Three kinds of modalities of motion were executed and they
were listed as follow.
Passive modality: Subject was equipped with the exoskele-
ton on the right upper limb, and the subject moved the upper
limb and the exoskeleton in the course of experiments.
Free modality: Subject executed the movements intro-
duced above without the exoskeleton.
Assistive modality: The exoskeleton system guided the up-
per limb of the subject to accomplish the movements intro-
duced above.
Each subject repeated the experiment five times under each
modality and had a rest of 2 hours between two adjacent ex-
periments avoiding muscle fatigue. In this study, the move-
ment in the experiment mainly involved the motion of shoul-
der flexion/extension, shoulder abduction/adduction, shoulder
internal/external rotation, and elbow flexion/extension. In
addition, the related muscles were the pectoralis major-
clavicular (PEC), infraspinatus (INFR), deltoid-anterior
(DEAN), deltoid-posterior (DEPO), biceps (BICP), and tri-
ceps (TRCP). The sEMG signals of these muscles of upper
limb were collected to be an indicator to evaluate the ability of
movements assistance of the exoskeleton. The corresponding
sEMG channels are listed in Table 3, and the relationship be-
tween the motions and the sEMG channels are listed in Table
4. Fig. 12 illustrates the location of the sEMG electrodes. The
sEMG signals were acquired by using the superficial Ag/AgCl
electrodes (KAIKANG Technology Inc, ECG electrodes
30×20 mm), and the inter-electrode spacing was 20 mm. Be-
fore pasting the electrode, the skin of subject was shaved and
cleaned using the alcohol. The collected sEMG signals were
amplified firstly by the MyoScan model SA9503M from
861
Table 4. The relationship between the motion and the sEMG channels.
Motion of joint Related sEMG channels
Shoulder flexion Ch.3, Ch.1, Ch.5
Shoulder extension Ch.4, Ch.2
Shoulder abduction Ch.3, Ch.4
Shoulder adduction Ch.1, Ch.6, Ch.2
Shoulder internal rotation Ch.3, Ch.1
Shoulder external rotation Ch.2, Ch.4
Elbow flexion Ch.5
Elbow extension Ch.6
(a) (b)
Fig. 12. The location of the sEMG electrodes: (a) The sEMG elec-
trodes on the backside; (b) the sEMG electrodes on the foreside.
Thought Technology Ltd, and then encoded by the FlexComp
Infiniti encoder from Thought Technology Ltd. The sampled
signals were transmitted to the personal computer by using the
TT-USB interface unit. The raw sEMG signals were sampled
at 2048 Hz by the sEMG signals acquisition system.
In this work, the raw sEMG signals were band-pass filtered
by a fifth-order Butterworth filter with cutoff frequency of
13~500 Hz. The Root mean square (RMS) feature signals of
sEMG were extracted and filtered by a fifth-order Butterworth
low filter of 4 Hz to achieve a better representation of sEMG
signals. As the magnitude of RMS feature signals of each
subject were different, the data set of the RMS feature signal
should be normalized. In this paper, the RMS feature signals
of sEMG were normalized using a classical isometric Maxi-
mal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) method [30, 31].
The MVC method meant that the subject should perform iso-
metric contractions with a muscle-specific arm posture against
the resistance, then the measured maximal value of sEMG
was used to normalize the sEMG signal of the corresponding
muscle. The Average root mean square (ARMS) was applied
to evaluate the average performance of movement assist. It is
obvious that the larger the ARMS is, the more energy pro-
duced by human muscles is.
5. Results
As the frequency of motion is 60 bpm, which means that the
cycle time of movements is 24 seconds. In this section, the
experimental results in one cycle are presented. In this work,
two examples of experiment are taken and the results were
illustrated from Figs. 13-16. Figs. 13 and 14 show the kinetic
862 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 13. The kinetic profile under three kinds of modalities for D#2.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
(e) (f)
Fig. 14. The low-pass filtered RMS profiles of the corresponding mus-
cles for D#2.
profile and the filtered RMS feature signals of six muscles
under three kinds of modalities for D#2. Figs. 15 and 16 show
the kinetic profile and the filtered RMS feature signals of six
muscles under three kinds of modalities for A#4. Here D#2
and A#4 represent the second time experiment of subject D
and the fourth time experiment of subject A, respectively. The
kinetic profile under three kinds of modalities shown in Figs.
13 and 15 are almost the same. The larger the filtered RMS
feature signal is, the more the power produced by muscles of
human is. It shows that the power produced by muscles of
human under the passive modality are thelargest, and the sub-
ject can achieve the same movement with the smallest power
when the exoskeleton is used to assist the subject.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 15. The low-pass filtered RMS profiles of the corresponding mus-
cles for A#4.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
(e) (f)
Fig. 16. The low-pass filtered RMS profiles of the corresponding mus-
cles for A#4.
Fig. 17 shows the average performance of the exoskeleton,
and the average RMS values and their standard deviation are
listed in Table 5. By comparison, we know that the average
RMS values of muscles under the passive modality are the
largest. For example, the average RMS values of DEAN under
the assistive modality, the free modality, and the passive mo-
dality are 0.0765±0.0077, 0.1212±0.0094 and 0.2981±0.0126,
respectively. Then, it indicates that the amplitudes of the fil-
tered RMS feature signals under the assistive modality are the
smallest. According to Table 5, the average RMS values of
sEMG signals are the least when the exoskeleton is applied to
assist subjects. It demonstrates that the designed exoskeleton
can be used to assist the subject to accomplish the correspond-
 F. Xiao et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 32 (2) (2018) 855~864 863

Table 5. The average RMS values and the standard deviation. values of INFR, DEAN and BICP are larger than the average
RMS values of PEC, DEPO and TRCP. This means that the
Muscles Passive modality Free modality Assistive modality
INFR, DEAN and BICP play vital roles in the course of ex-
PEC 0.1154±0.0113 0.0146±0.0006 0.0129±0.0006
periments. Table 5 lists the average RMS values and the stan-
INFR 0.2308±0.0072 0.0895±0.0024 0.0706±0.0053 dard deviation, and the average RMS values under the assis-
DEAN 0.2981±0.0126 0.1212±0.0094 0.0765±0.0077 tive modality are smaller than the average RMS values under
DEPO 0.1506±0.0092 0.0501±0.0025 0.0404±0.0047 the free modality. However, the standard deviation of several
BICP 0.2672±0.0084 0.0957±0.0039 0.0629±0.0074 muscles under the assistive modality are larger than the stan-
TRCP 0.1055±0.0101 0.0181±0.0006 0.0131±0.0004 dard deviation under the free modality. The reason may be
that the subject were a litter nervous when they wore the exo-
skeleton which made the results were relatively unstable. In
this work, we tested the assisted ability of the exoskeleton. In
the future, the exoskeleton will be applied to assist the pa-
tients’ rehabilitation or their daily life.

Acknowledgment
The study was funded and supported by the National Natu-
ral Science Foundation (Grant No. 60975067) and the Nuclear
Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2015BAF01B03).

Fig. 17. The average RMS values.

ing motions with the least muscle activities. As the healthy
subjects imitate the patients’ motion in a natural way, the re-
sults also shows that the exoskeleton designed in this work
can be used to assist the post-stroke patients to achieve the
desired motion with the least muscles' activity. In addition, the
evaluation method in this paper can be used to evaluate the
effectiveness of rehabilitation in the course of rehabilitation
for patients.
6. Discussion and conclusion
In this work, we present the design and evaluation of a ca-
ble-driven 7-DOF upper limb exoskeleton. Two types of dif-
ferential mechanism were designed and a new tension device
was also designed to provide the adjustable pre-tightening
force to the wire ropes. To decrease the weight of the exo-
skeleton, the cable-conduit transmission mechanism was ap-
plied to transmit the power from motors mounted on the back-
board to the corresponding joint. The weight of the backboard
and motors can be supported by the ground when this 7-DOF
exoskeleton were applied with the lower limb exoskeleton
which makes the exoskeleton be light and comfortable for
patients. The whole weight of the exoskeleton was 3.5 kg. To
evaluate the assistive performance of the exoskeleton, the
sEMG signals of muscles were applied and the results showed
that the activation levels of sEMG of subjects were reduced
which indicated that this new exoskeleton were helpful for
patients in the course of rehabilitation.
According to Figs. 14 and 16, we know that the RMS of
muscles in most of time are the smallest when we use the exo-
skeleton. By comparison, we know that the average RMS
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Feiyun Xiao received the B.S. degree
from Hefei University of Technology
(HFUT), Hefei, China, in 2013. He is
currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree in Harbin Institute of Technol-
ogy (HIT), Harbin, China. His research
interests include mechanism design,
sEMG signal processing with upper
limb exoskeleton.
Yongsheng Gao received the B.Sc.,
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in State Key
Laboratory of Robotics Institute, Harbin
Institute of Technology (HIT), Harbin,
China, in 1994, 2001 and 2007. He is
currently a Professor in HIT. His re-
search interests include pathological
tremor suppress, tele-operation robot,
biomedical signal processing.