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A 7 DOF Wearable Robotic Arm Using Pneumatic Actuators

Conference Paper · April 2001

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Proceedings of the 32nd ISR(International Symposium on Robotics), 19-21 April 2001

A 7 DOF Wearable Robotic Arm Using Pneumatic Actuators

Younkoo Jeong*, Yongseon Lee*, Kyunghwan Kim*, Yeh-Sun Hong** and Jong-Oh Park*

* Korea Institute of Science & Technology, P.O.Box 131, Cheongryang, Seoul 130-650, Korea
** Hankuk Aviation University, 200-1, Whajon-dong, Deokyang-gu, Koyang, Kyonggi-do, Korea
E-mail : ykjeong@kist.re.kr, kimk@kist.re.kr, yshong@mail.hangkong.ac.kr

Abstract
As human-friendly robot techniques improve, the
concept of the wearability of robotic arms becomes
important. A master arm that detects human arm motion and
provides virtual forces to the operator is an embodied
concept of a wearable robotic arm. The medical orthosis
used in the medical rehabilitation can also be included in the
category of a wearable robotic arm. For the application areas
such as human-power amplification or virtual reality
experience, a kind of wearable robotic arm is also needed. In
this study, we design a 7 DOF wearable robotic arm with
high joint torques. An operator wearing this robotic arm can
move around freely because this robotic arm was designed
to have its fixed point at the shoulder part of the operator.
The proposed robotic arm uses parallel mechanis ms at the
shoulder part and the wrist part on the model of the human
muscular structure of an upper limb. To reduce the
computational load in solving the forward kinematics and to
prevent singularity motions of the parallel mechanism,
yawing motion of the parallel mechanisms was separated
using a slip ling mechanism. A small-size pneumatic
proportional control valve was also developed to improve
the response characteristics of pneumatic actuators and to
reduce the total weight of the robotic arm. The total weight
of the proposed robotic arm is about 4 kgf. Some motion
and force tracking experiments were performed to evaluate
the capability of pneumatic control system of the proposed
robotic arm. Some application examples using robotic arm
such as teleoperation and VR experience are also described
to show its validity.
1. Introduction
A wearable robotic arm is an exoskeletal robotic arm
to follow human arm motion and to provide human arm
with joint torques if needed. It can be used for teleoperation,
medical rehabilitation, VR (Virtual Reality) experience, and
human-power amplification. Previous researches on the
master arm for teleoperation have emphasized the
performance of human motion tracking and force control
mainly but ignored how comfortable an operator feels , that
is, issues of wearability [1,2]. Because most robotic arms
are heavy in weight and fixed at a structure such as a wall or
a pole, operator’s arm motion is limited in a space and the
operator is apt to feel excess fatigue. This restricts its range
of applications, especially, in the area of medical
rehabilitation or VR experience where issues of human
wearability are very important.
We have developed several versions of wearable
robotic arm in consideration of the concept of human
wearability [3,4]. Disadvantages of the previous researches
are their computational complexity in kinematics and low
force-reflection capability [5]. The proposed wearable
robotic arm in this paper is designed to have high joint
torques as well as high wearability. The robotic arms uses
parallel mechanisms for the shoulder joint and the wrist
joint by analogy with human muscles. As the proposed
robotic arm is designed to have its basement at human body,
the operator wearing these robotic arms can move freely
during operation and this reduces operator’s fatigue. To
simplify its kinematics without degrading wearability,
rotational motions of human arm are decoupled from the
parallel mechanism. In addition, Pneumatic actuators are
used to be in compliance with human motion smoothly and
to improve force-reflection capability. New proportional
control valve and control system are developed for the force
control of pneumatic actuators.
2. Mechanical Design of the Wearable Robotic Arm
2.1 Conceptual Design
Human arm has 7 degrees of freedom from the
shoulder joint to the wrist joint, when translational motions
of shoulder joint are neglected. The shoulder joint has three
degrees of freedom, that is, flexion/extension,
abduction/adduction and medial rotation/lateral rotation.
The elbow joint has two degrees of freedom, that is,
flexion/extension and pronation/supination. The wrist joint
has 2 degrees of freedom, that is, flexion/extension and
abduction/adduction [6]. All these motions originate from
muscular movement in which many extensors and flexors
around bones interact with each other and generate joint
torques. The parallel mechanism has an analogy to this
human muscular movement. The prismatic joints in the
parallel mechanism may act as virtual human muscles and
affect operator's muscular strength by contraction and
relaxation. The configuration of the prismatic joints in
parallel mechanism enhances human wearability because all
the joints are placed on the surface of human arm.

388
Consequently, this distributes internal force over an arm and 2.2 Inverse Kinematics for a 3RPS Parallel Mechanism
thus contributes to reduce human fatigue during operation.
A 3RPS (Revolute-Prismatic -Sphere)parallel mechanism A schematic of a 3RPS parallel mechanism is shown in
has two degrees of freedom in orientation and one degree of Fig.2. The upper platform is connected to the links
freedom in Cartesian position [7]. The two degrees of (prismatic joints) by means of ball joints (sphere joints) that
freedom in orientation can be used for the two degrees of are equally spaced at 120 degree and at a radius r from the
freedom in orientation for the shoulder joint and the wrist center of the upper platform. The other ends of the links are
joint. One degree of freedom in Cartesian position is useful connected to the base platform. By changing the link lengths,
for the reconfiguration of the robotic arm based on the the upper platform can be manipulated with respect to the
dimensional change of operators. For the medial base platform.
rotation/lateral rotations of the shoulder joint and the The coordinates of the pin joints in XYZ frame and
pronation/supination of the elbow joint, slip ring coordinates of the ball joints in xyz frame are expressed like
mechanisms can be used. For the flexion/extension of the equations (1) and (2) respectively. The positions of 3 sphere
elbow joint, a 4-bar linkage mechanism is useful. Base on joints and 3 revolute joints are defined after the parametric
these concepts, a wearable robotic arm is designed as Fig. 1. analysis of 3RPS parallel mechanism. The strokes of 3
As shown in Fig. 1, two 3RPS parallel mechanisms are used prismatic joints are also defined based on the parametric
for the shoulder joint and the wrist joint and 2 slip ring analysis.
mechanisms are used for rotational motions of the shoulder
joint and the elbow joint. A 4 bar-linkage mechanism is  1   1 
selected for the elbow joint.  − 2 R  −2R 
R     
B1 =  0 , B2 = 
3  3 
R , B3 = −
(1)
R
 2   2 
 0   0   0 
   
   

 1   1 
− 2 r   − 2r 
r    
b1 = 0 , b2 = 
3  3 
r , b3 = − r
 2   2  (2)
0  0   0 
   
   
The coordinate frame xyz with respect to the base
Fig. 1. Conceptual design of a wearable robotic arm. coordinate frame XYZ can be described by the
homogeneous transformation [T] like equation (3).

 n1 o1 a1 xc 
n o2 a2 y c 
[T ] = 
2 (3)
 n3 o3 a3 zc 
 
0 0 0 1

where ( xc , y c , z c )describes the position of the origin of

the xyz frame and the orientation vectors are the directional
cosines of the axes x, y and z with respect to the base frame
XYZ. As the unit vectors a, n, o form an orthonormal set,
there are six constraint equations of the nine elements. The
Cartesian position of the ball joints with respect to the base
frame XYZ can be express as equation (4).

 Bi  bi 
1  = [T ]1 
Fig. 2. Schematic of a 3RPS parallel mechanism. (4)
  xyz   xyz

389
where the vectors Bi and bi describe the position vectors of
i-th ball joint with respect to the base frame XYZ and frame
xyz, respectively. The length of the prismatic joints, which is
equal to the distance between the i-th ball joint and the i-th
revolute joint can be calculated using equations (5), (6), and
(7).

L12 = ( n1 ρ + X c − 1) 2
+ ( n2 ρ + Y c ) 2 (5)
+ ( n3 ρ + Z c ) 2
1
L22 = [( −n1 ρ + 3o1 ρ + 2 X c + 1) 2
4
+ ( −n 2 ρ + 3o 2 ρ + 2Yc − 3 ) 2 (6)

+ ( −n3 ρ + 3o 3 ρ + 2Z c ) 2 ] Fig. 3. Analysis of performance index to design parameters

for a 3RPS parallel mechanism.
1
L23 = [( −n1 ρ − 3o1 ρ + 2 X c + 1) 2
4
(7) Figure 3 shows a calculation result of the performance
+ ( −n 2 ρ − 3o2 ρ + 2Yc + 3 ) 2 index when the design parameters change. The design
+ ( −n3 ρ − 3o3 ρ + 2Z c ) 2 ] parameters were selected at the maximum performance
index. The diameters of pneumatic cylinders for the
where , shoulder joint and the wrist joint were selected as 16mm and
r l x y z
ρ= , Li = i , X c = c , Yc = c , Z c = c 10mm respectively. The joint range and the joint torque for
shoulder joint were calculated as 86 deg and 17.7 Nm
R R R R R
respectively at the maximum performance index. For the
wrist joint, the joint range and the joint torque were
2.3 Parametric analysis of 3RPS Parallel Mechanism calculated as 60 deg and 4Nm at the maximu m performance
index.
The distance z c between the upper platform and the lower For the elbow joint, a parametric analysis was performed
platform, can be defined from the dimension of human body. based on the kinematic analysis of 4-bar-linkage system. For
The joint range and joint torque of the upper platform two rotational degrees of freedom of the shoulder joint and
change with respect to the change of positions of joints. To the elbow joint, rotational mechanisms were designed with
find the optimal values for the positions of sphere and rotary pneumatic actuators. Table 1 shows the result of the
revolute joints and the stroke of prismatic joints, a parametric design for the proposed robotic arm.
parametric analysis of 3RPS parallel mechanism was
performed. The ratio ( ρ =r/R) and the stroke of the
prismatic joint were selected as design parameters and a Table 1. Joint ranges and joint torques for each joint
performance index including maximum joint ranges, Shoulder joint Elbow joint Wrist joint
maximum joint torques, and uniform factors was defined as Flexion/ 86 17.7 97 7.1 60 4
equation (8). Extension deg Nm deg Nm deg Nm
Adduction/ 86 17.7 - - 60 4
PI ( ρ, L ) = JR( ρ, L ) ⋅ W1 + JT ( ρ, L) ⋅ W 2 (8) Abduction deg Nm deg Nm
+ UF ( ρ, L) ⋅ W 3 Rotational 90 2.2 90 2.2 - -
Motion deg Nm deg Nm
where, PI is the performance index at given parameters,
r/R(ρ) and stroke(L). JR and JT are the joint range and the
joint torque, respectively. UF is a uniform factor of the joint 3. Prototyping of the Wearable Robotic Arm
torque. W1, W2, and W3 are weight factors for each item.
As the maximum joint range is more important than the 3.1 Body of the Wearable Robotic Arm
maximum joint torque, the weight factor for the joint range
has the biggest value in three weight factors. When the total All the detailed mechanisms were designed by using a 3-D
weight of the wearable robotic arm and the response of CAD software, Pro/Engineer. The proposed robotic arm is
pneumatic actuators are considered, the diameter of made with aluminum and engineering plastics. The total
pneumatic cylinders should not exceed 20mm.

390
weight of the manufactured robotic arm is about 4 kgf
except the pneumatic power supplier. Fig. 4 shows a photo
of an operator with the wearable robotic arm. The shoulder
part was designed in consideration of the chest shape of
operators. As distances between the base platform and the
moving platform of 3RPS parallel mechanisms for the
shoulder joint and the wrist joint can be changed, operators
with different body dimension can wear the proposed
robotic arm with a well-fitted condition. For rotational
motions for the shoulder joint and the elbow joint, slip ring
mechanisms and rotary pneumatic actuators are used with
timing belt for torque transmission. The hand part of the
robotic arm was designed like a glove without fingers so as
that the operator move freely his fingers during operation. A
Fig. 5. Proportional control valves (4 channels).
hand haptic device can be used with this robotic arm
simultaneously.
4. Control System

4.1 Pneumatic Control System

Two instrument amplifiers (AD620AN, Analog Device) are

used to interface and amplify the signals from pressure
sensors, and two dual OP amplifiers (LM358:Motorola) are
used to calculate the differential pressures and calculate
errors between the reference differential pressure and the
actual differential pressure. A VI (Voltage to Current)
converter circuit is connected between the error signal line
and the solenoid coil line of the control valve. An analog PI
controller is designed to control the proportional control
valve to trace the reference pressure trajectories from the
digital controller. Fig. 6 shows photos of the signal
conditioning circuit for the pressure control valve and the
digital controller (386 EX) that generate the reference
Fig. 4. An operator with the proposed robotic arm.
differential pressure for each pneumatic actuator after
calculating the required joint torque. The digital controller
uses a wireless serial communication protocol with the
3.2 Pneumatic Control Valve
external processors during operation. Fig. 7 shows the
schematic diagram of the total pneumatic control system.
A small-size proportional control valve was developed to
reduce the total weight of the robotic arm and improve the
control performance of the pneumatic actuators. The
dimension of one pneumatic control valve is about
20*30*10 mm and the weight is very low. Two small-size
pressure sensors (CPC100: Data Instruments) were attached
for one control valve to detect the differential pressure
directly between two output ports. These control valves can
be attached to the rear part of the robotic arm with a little
increase of weight. As the tube lengths between the control
valve and pneumatic cylinders become short by attaching
Fig. 6. Analog signal conditioning circuit and Digital
control valves at the robotic arm, the time delay of
Controller. (a) Analog signal conditioning circuit. (b)
pneumatic actuators can be reduced. Fig. 5 shows a module
Digital controller (Intel 386 EX)
of proportional control valves for 4 pneumatic cylinders.

391
 Fig. 7. Schematic of pneumatic control system

At motion detection mode, the control system tries to keep

differential pressure of pneumatic cylinders as zero value.
This allows operator to move freely during operation with
low effort. At force reflection mode, the control system
calculates reference thrust forces for each pneumatic Fig. 8. Force tracking performance (sinusoidal reference input).
cylinder and provides reference differential pressures to sub-
control loop to trace the reference differential pressures.
Each pneumatic cylinder has one sub-controller for
differential pressure control.

4.2 Fail-safe method

Since the maximum thrust force of a pneumatic cylinder for

the 3RPS parallel mechanism is not low, the failure of the
control system may be harmful to the operator. To protect
the operator at the failure of the control system, the system
has several fail-safe methods.

l When the control system stops suddenly, the main

pneumatic pressure supply line is cut off automatically
by closing the main cut-off valve.
l In the shoulder part parallel mechanism, home position
of one pair pneumatic cylinders of mechanism is
designed to be opposite to the other. This prevents the Fig. 9. Disturbance force rejection performance
most dangerous posture of a parallel mechanism, (step-wise reference input).
which may occur when all the length of pneumatic
cylinder becomes maximized.
l The designed joint ranges of robotic arm are within
allowable joint range of human arm. So, joint angles of
robotic arm do not exceed reasonable values.

5. Application Results

Fig. 8 shows an experimental result when the reference

differential pressure is a sinusoidal form and operator does
not move his arm during test. The figure shows good
tracking performance. Fig. 9 shows another experimental
result when the reference differential pressure is a step-wise
form and operator moves his arm position. In this case,
operator’s movement affects thrust force of pneumatic
cylinder as disturbance. Even though operator moves as a
sinusoidal form, the actual differential pressure of the
cylinder is tracing the reference pressure good performance.
When reference differential pressure is set as zero, operator Fig. 10 Step response of joint torque for the shoulder joint.
can move freely with low effort.

392

Fig. 11. Sinusoidal torque response for the shoulder joint.
Fig. 10 shows a step response of the joint torque for the
shoulder joint. The time delay is about 300 msec. Fig. 11
show a sinusoidal torque response for the shoulder joint. At
high joint torque, the actual joint torque is somewhat
distorted by the movement of the operator’s shoulder joint
and the nonlinear effect of the control valve. For dynamic
interaction between the operator and the wearable robotic
arm, an enhanced control algorithm is needed.
6. Conclusions
In the future, an enhanced control algorithm will be
introduced to compensate the time delay of pneumatic
actuators and the nonlinear effect of the control valve.
Researches on the interaction between the human arm and
the wearable robotic arm will be continued. The proposed
wearable robotic arm will be used as a master arm for
teleoperation (Fig. 12) of an inspection robot for the nuclear
power plant with visual informations and virtual reality
technologies. The proposed wearable robotic arm can also
be used for a human power assinsting system with
biosignals.
Fig. 12. An example of application : teleoperation.
393
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7. References
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Type Haptic Interface,” Journal of Robotics Society of
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Muscle Actuator (pMA) Powered Exoskeleton,” RO-
MAN’99, 1999.
[3] Jonghyun choi, Jeungtea Kim, Dongshin, Chongwon Lee,
Jong-Oh Park, Jang-Hyun Park, “Design and
Characteristic Analysis of 7 DOF Hybrid Master Arm
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pp195-205, 1998.
[4] Jong-Hyun Choi, Ji-Heuk Song, Jung-Tae Kim, hong-
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like Hybrid Master Arm for dexterous teleoperation,”
Proceedings of the 13th KACC, pp.1807 - 1810, 1998.
[5] Jungtea Kim, etc, “Singularity Analysis and its
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[6] Blandine Calais -Germain, Anatomy of Movement, 1985
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