上肢外骨骼機器人系統之設計、評估與實現

Abstract

隨著社會型態的變遷，老年人口增加、勞動人口短缺與醫療資源不足等問題逐一浮現，讓外骨骼機器人成為國內外學者研究的重要議題。基於這樣的背景，我們期望開發針對神經、運動功能受損者的上肢穿戴式外骨骼機器人。先前我們實驗室已完成了上肢外骨骼機器人系統HAMEXO-I，以幫助使用者進行復健任務與完成日常生活工作，本論文進一步思考如何設計出功能更好、更適合使用者的機器人，我們從既有上肢外骨骼機器人的驅動器、機構框架、感測器、控制器等面向進行分析與歸納，進而開發出新的上肢外骨骼機器人HAMEXO-N。我們乃針對舊有系統問題改良，加入從分析求得的設計方法，再藉由實驗來驗證我們設計的機器人系統，並且以問卷方式呈現受測者使用HAMEXO-N的評價，整體結果展現出此系統具有未來發展與生活應用的可能性。

Along with the coming of elderly society, workforce shortage and insufficient medical resources become as a major concern. Exoskeleton robots thus become a focus of robotic researches. Based on it, we develop an upper-limb wearable exoskeleton robot for the patients with impaired nerves or motor functions. In the past, our laboratory has developed an upper-limb exoskeleton robot, named as HAMEXO-I, which is designed to assist the user for conducting rehabilitation tasks and activities in daily lives. As HAMEXO-I is not up to our expectation, in this thesis, we intend to design a better one. We thus analyze the upper-limb types of exoskeleton robots from the aspects of actuator, mechanical frame, sensors, and controllers, and come up with a new upper-limb exoskeleton robot, named as HAMEXO-N, which is much improved when compared with HAMEXO-I. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the performance of HAMEXO-N. Evaluation based on the questionnaires on user response also validates its effectiveness. These results indicate that HAMEXO-N is with the potential for practical applications in daily lives.