Proceedings of the 3rd
RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics
October 7-9, 2015, Tehran, Iran
Design and Development of One Degree of Freedom
Upper Limb Exoskeleton
Borhan Beigzadeh, Mahdi Ilami and Sohrab Najafian
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Iran University of Science and Technology,
Tehran, Iran
Najafian.sohrab@gmail.com
Abstract— Exoskeleton robots are categorized as
rehabilitating and assisting robots which could be applied in other
applications such as power augmentation systems, haptic systems,
and virtual reality. Considering the increasing number of old
people and those who suffer from physical weakness and some
kinds of disabilities, the need of exploiting the rehabilitation
mechanisms and processes is one of the most important issues in
this field. In this paper a simple upper limb exoskeleton with one
degree of freedom is studied and developed. The joint torque
estimation corresponding to the biological movements as well as
safety issues are considered. Kinematic parameters of the upper
limb are needed to design the robot, thus a mechanism is designed
to derive this set of data. Then a prototype of the exoskeleton is
introduced, whose mechanical design, actuation and power
transmission method as well as its selection criteria are discussed
here. The mechanical design section is followed by electrical
circuits and devices. Finally, the performance of robot is evaluated
using a test-rig mechanism which examines how the kinematical
parameters of arm could be tracked by our approach.
Keywords— Upper limb exoskeleton robot, design and
developing, mechanical evaluation
I. INTRODUCTION
Exoskeletons are mechatronic systems worn by a person.
Direct physical contact with human body would result in
interactive power and information transmission: therefore, in
exoskeleton design human posture and body functionality must
be fully considered. Furthermore, Links and joints dimensions
should be designed so that the system would fit to human body
easily.
At the beginning, these robots were just used to augment
one’s strength remotely. With the passage of the time, these
kinds of robots are used for the elderly and those who were
weak. Robot and human interface is a challenging part of robot
design, which has been divided into two subcategories: the first
is based on cognition. That means, an interactive connection
should be established because of the fact that human would
control the robot and the robot would provide the feedback. The
second subcategory is biomechanical connection, which would
lead to interactive power transmission between human and the
robot. In the design process, the point that human is inseparable
part of the design is of high importance; moreover, it would add
variety of needs and limitations.
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Important mechanical design criteria are: movement
limitations, safety, ease of wearing and adaptability. To design
a controller, controllability, flexibility, continuous and normal
movement, fast response to orders must be taken into account.
Also, Controller must send the operation commands so that it
would follow all the person’s voluntarily movements.
In recent years, various upper body exoskeleton designs are
proposed, most of those have 7 degrees of freedom or less. In
case of actuators, electrical and pneumatic actuators are used in
most of the cases (Except the hydraulic actuator used by the S.
Schaal [2]).
Perry, and Burns [3] designed a 7 degrees of freedom robot
(CADEN-7). In most of the designs in which shoulder and
forearm rotation has been considered, user must put his/her hand
in a way that it is located in the bearing joint. In Caden-7 this
problem is solved by using separable joints. In cable driven
robots, it would be a demanding task to reach all the body joint
field of motion: however, in Caden-7 a special method is used
to follow the desired motion. Additionally, seven single axis
revolute joints are used in the robot.
Kiguchi et al. [4] built a 4 degrees of freedom exoskeleton.
Knowing the fact that the weak use wheelchair, this exoskeleton
is designed so that it could be installed on wheelchairs. The
control procedure used for the robot is based on the user’s
electromyography signals.
Caldwell [5] designed a 7 degrees of freedom rehabilitation
and instructive robot. The specific characteristic of the robot is
the use of pneumatic muscle actuators. Similarity to human
muscle functionality made the robot desirable for those who are
suffering of muscle weakness. Aluminum and composite
materials with steel joints are used for robot structure.
Sarcos company is also manufactured a kind of full body
exoskeleton [1]. The goal of the project was to use an
independent source of energy to operate the robot. In terms of
actuators and control, each joints of the robot works with the
help of hydraulic rotary actuators, and for the control aim the
admittance control is used. But, Sarcos cannot follow all the
user’s movements because of the control method.
ARMin [6] is built in the University of Zurich. Many
different designs of ARMin has been built and after the second
design, it had the ability to support the user’s seven degree-of-
freedom motion. In addition to control strategy, user could
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communicate with robot through sound, vision and tactile sense.
Furthermore, the length of robot’s forearm, hand and height is
adjustable for different types of people.
Sasaki and colleague [7] built a pneumatic actuated
exoskeleton robot called “ASSISST”. With the use of plastic
surfaces and smooth actuators resistive forces of robot against
the desired movements decreased. In what follows, the
extraction procedure of information needed for design,
mechanisms selection, way of production and power
transmission is discussed. Then, the reason behind our final
choice is mentioned. The electronic circuits, and the robot
functionality is discussed lastly.
II. COLLECTING THE DATA NEEDED FOR ROBOT DESIGN
Before doing the robot arm mechanical design or choosing
the proper actuator, and procedure of power transmission, elbow
field of motion and maximum velocity and acceleration is
needed to be known. So, two links with one incremental encoder
installed on the joint (shown in Fig. 1) so that velocity and
acceleration of the elbow could be measured by a data
acquisition board. Two links were mounted on forearm and arm
to log the real time data and send it to the computer. Then, the
data processed in the host computer and angle, velocity and
acceleration is plotted, which is shown in Fig. 2.
A. Velocity estimation with incremental encoder
Several methods for estimating the velocity from the
displacement and incremental optical encoders is presented.
Euler method is the simplest method to estimate the velocity at
which the difference between two sequential sampled data of
position is divided by sampling period [7] [8]. This method is
associated by severe noise as the sampled positions of
incremental encoders contains stochastic errors (especially at
low velocity and when the sampling frequency is small) .To
reduce the errors, one way is to use the difference of more than
one sampling unit. Therefore, in choosing the time steps a
balance between noise and time delay must be considered.
III. PROTOTYPE
Fig. 3 shows the designed exoskeleton robot to assist the
elbow with its movements. This robot consists of two links
attached to upper limb and forearm, respectively, which has a
common rotation axis corresponding to the axis of rotation of
elbow joint. The robot mechanism consists of two pulleys as
well. The first one is attached to driving motor shaft which is
located outside the center of rotation. This pulley drives the
other by a power transmission cable to produce forearm flexion/
extension motions.
Fig. 1. . Incremental encoder installed on the target arm
A. Actuator and Power transmission selection
Since the efficiency of the upper limb exoskeleton robot
depends on actuators and power transmission systems, they
should be selected carefully. In this section, different techniques
of production and power transmission systems are presented,
also their advantages and disadvantages to upper limb
exoskeleton robots are discussed.
There are several technologies to actuate a system such as
DC servo motors, pneumatic actuators, hydraulic actuators,
ultrasonic motors and shape memory alloy. But some of them
are not proper for upper limb exoskeletons due to high weight,
large scale, and low torque generation. In exoskeleton robots DC
motors, pneumatic actuators and hydraulic actuators are mostly
used. The advantages and disadvantages of these actuators for
upper limb exoskeletons are discussed below.
Due to the fact that DC motors have high speed and
precision, they are commonly used in upper limb exoskeleton
robots with advanced control method. To use a small and low
weight DC motor, you need to use gears to obtain higher torques
for upper limb motions. Pneumatic actuators can be used as
actuator of upper limb exoskeleton as they provide high power
to weight ratio and safety. Since air is compressible in a
nonlinear way, pneumatic actuators are more difficult to control.
Therefore, these sort of actuators have been used in few upper
limb exoskeleton robots. Hydraulic actuators have acceptable
torque, precision and also their speed is high enough. On the
other hand, oil leakage and oil leakage are disadvantages of
these actuators. Therefore, they are not commonly used in upper
limb exoskeleton robots. According to the above mentioned
advantages of DC motors, this type of motor has been selected.
In following, motor selection criteria of appropriate motor and
related calculations are discussed.

TABLE I. FIELD OF MOTION.

Type of motion Robot field of motion

(degree)
Elbow flexion 120
Elbow extension 0

Fig. 2. Exoskeleton prototype.

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B. Motor torque

TABLE II. ANTHROPOMETRY CHARACTERISTIC OF THE USER [10].

According to arm kinematic limits, the user's physical
characteristics (table 2), maximum load and dimensions of the
Organ data robot required driving power can be estimated.
Forearm and hand weight 1/628 kg
Center of mass to elbow 30/7 cm This robot is expected to assist lifting light weight loads
(something around 500gr). Target users’ anatomical
distance
characteristics such as forearm mass and field of motion, center
Hand and forearm gyration 23/7 cm of gravity, maximum joint velocity and acceleration are gathered
radius with rotation around so that the desired motor could be chosen.
elbow
density 1/13 kg/lit gg

Fig. 3. Experimental kinematic data elbow joint

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 TABLE III. MOTOR CHARACTERISTIC FOR PROTOTYPE.
Motor characteristics Ideal value
Power 24 W
given voltage 12 V
Rotational speed 800 rpm
C. Power transmission
The way that motor transmits power is dependent on the
actuator type. Compressed air transfers power when pneumatic
actuator is used. In hydraulic systems, hydraulic oil is
responsible for the task. Gear wheels, cables and joints could be
used in conjunction with electrical motors to perform the
transmission. Generally, in upper body exoskeleton gear wheels
and cables are used. Also, conical shape gear has the benefit to
operate in robots that has non parallel axis. In what follows,
regarding that a direct current dc motor is chosen, and needs of
power transmission, the reason behind our final choice of power
transmission is discussed.
Since the motor shaft is positioned at different place from the
elbow joint, there must be a mechanism for power transmission.
To do so, a cable is chosen to transmit the power. One end is
attached to the motor shaft and the other is fixed at the elbow
joint. Owing the fact that the length of the cable is constant, shaft
rotation would result in the forearm movement (Fig. 5). Pulleys
dimension is selected in a way until it is located in the forearm
field of motion.
D. Circuit and electrical parts
Circuit and electrical parts includes a computer (Intel core i7
1.6 GHz), with two data acquisition board and a motor driver
(Sabertooth 2x5). Also, a 12 v power supply is used.
IV. CONTROL
In upper body exoskeleton control design, human control
system must also be considered. To stretch and bend elbow,
brain must send the control appropriate orders to bicep muscle
so that the angular displacement would result. Kinematic sensors
would measure displacements and then it would be used as the
control strategy input. To provide the desired motor torque, the
data must be processed and motor parameters must be extracted.
The next step in control process would be exerting the
appropriate voltage to the dc motor by using these data to
provide the similar motion. Consequently, the control cycle
would result in continuous similar motion of robot and hand.
V. EVALUATION
To evaluate the performance, the robot and hand movements
are compared. A sensor is attached to hand to provide the control
input. Another sensor is also attached to robot to record the
output and evaluate the control algorithm. Fig.7 shows angle,
displacement and acceleration trend in both hand and robot
sensors.
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Fig. 4. Power transmission mechanism.
A. Master and slave control
Another experiment is to study the robot controllability in
master and slave mode. Generally, this feature is used in
rehabilitation treatments. That would be a good exercise for
weak muscles, therefor they may get their power back. A
displacement sensor attached to another hand (master), and it
provided the input for the target hand (slave) on which robot had
been placed. As the consequence showed, the robot followed the
master commands with good acceptability.
B. Master and slave with the use of EMG as the input
In previous experiment, the input command was generated
by a displacement sensor. The same experiment was done by the
use of electromyography signals. Although the result was not as
good as using sensors, master and slave motion trend was
similar. To go a bit further, when the master’s hand came down,
the slave felt the downward trend and vice versa.
C. Using EMG as the input of control
To control the robot with the use electromyography signals,
both biceps and triceps electromyography signals were captured.
Signals must be meaningful to our control algorithm as the
input; therefore, some filters are used to process the data. Then,
by doing some calculation on the processed data, it is
transformed to the desired voltage needed for motor operation
(Fig. 8). [11]
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper a robotic mechanism for an upper body
exoskeleton is proposed. Recording the kinematic parameters
of elbow angle, different sensors and also EMG signals are used.
Various methods to provide the desired torque are studied.
Motor’s parameters and power transmission method is selected
based on anthropometry characteristic of a typical human hand.
In the end, some experiments are designed to evaluate the robot
performance. As it can be seen from the figures the robot would
follow the desired path. Our design must be much more
developed so that it could be used publically, but as the EMG
showed it helped the user by decreasing the his muscle activity.
Fig. 5. angle, displacement and acceleration trend of both hand and robot sensors

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 Fig. 6. Comparing robot and the target hand motion using EMG signal as the input of control
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