Abstract Due to their advantages of high durability, low labor intensiveness and high repeatability, upper limb exoskeletons have become promising tools in stroke rehabilitation. The act of decreasing the undesired interactional loads caused by exoskeleton incompatibility remains an enormous challenge in the design of ergonomic exoskeletons. In this article, a novel 4-DOF upper limb exoskeleton that is kinematically compatible with the upper limb is proposed. A prototype of the proposed exoskeleton was developed. Subsequently, the interaction forces, torques and displacements at the physical human-exoskeleton connection interfaces were detected under static and dynamic modes to quantitatively evaluate the compatibility of the exoskeleton. The results indicated that the proposed exoskeleton can significantly decrease the undesired interactional load at the connective interfaces, and its ergonomic design was found to be effective; thus, this exoskeleton may be used for the rehabilitation of human upper limbs.

中文翻译：

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用于上肢康复的四自由度人体工学外骨骼的相容性评价

摘要 上肢外骨骼由于具有高耐用性、低劳动强度和高重复性等优点，已成为中风康复的有前景的工具。减少由外骨骼不兼容引起的不需要的交互载荷的行为仍然是人体工程学外骨骼设计中的一个巨大挑战。在本文中，提出了一种与上肢运动学兼容的新型 4-DOF 上肢外骨骼。开发了拟议外骨骼的原型。随后，在静态和动态模式下检测物理人-外骨骼连接界面处的相互作用力、扭矩和位移，以定量评估外骨骼的兼容性。结果表明，所提出的外骨骼可以显着减少连接界面处的不必要的交互负荷，并且发现其人体工程学设计是有效的；因此，这种外骨骼可用于人类上肢的康复。