Jingzong Zhou, Priya Kulkarni, Xincheng Zhao, Sunil K. Agrawal
{"title":"Design of a traction neck brace with two degrees-of-freedom via a novel architecture of a spatial parallel mechanism","authors":"Jingzong Zhou, Priya Kulkarni, Xincheng Zhao, Sunil K. Agrawal","doi":"10.1017/s0263574724000882","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Traction of the head-neck is important in the treatment of patients suffering from neck pain due to degeneration of the intervertebral discs. Conventional neck traction is provided manually by experienced physical therapists who maintain a desired orientation of the head-neck relative to the trunk while applying the traction. It is postulated that innovative designs of neck exoskeletons can provide the same function both flexibly and accurately. This article presents a novel architecture of a parallel mechanism whose base sits on the human shoulders with 4 parallel chains, each chain having a revolute-revolute-universal-revolute (<jats:italic>RRUR</jats:italic>) structure, while the end-effector is connected rigidly to the human head. Each chain has five degrees-of-freedom (DOF) and applies a constraint on the motion of the end-effector. As a result, this parallel mechanism allows two DOFs to the end-effector. These are (i) forward flexion or lateral bending of the head and (ii) vertical translation. An important motivation for the current design with <jats:italic>RRUR</jats:italic> structure is to characterize the range of forward flexion/lateral bending of the head-neck with this structure and the vertical translation to the end-effector. A physical prototype was constructed and tested to evaluate the performance of this mechanism in hardware for the proposed application.","PeriodicalId":49593,"journal":{"name":"Robotica","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Robotica","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0263574724000882","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ROBOTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Traction of the head-neck is important in the treatment of patients suffering from neck pain due to degeneration of the intervertebral discs. Conventional neck traction is provided manually by experienced physical therapists who maintain a desired orientation of the head-neck relative to the trunk while applying the traction. It is postulated that innovative designs of neck exoskeletons can provide the same function both flexibly and accurately. This article presents a novel architecture of a parallel mechanism whose base sits on the human shoulders with 4 parallel chains, each chain having a revolute-revolute-universal-revolute (RRUR) structure, while the end-effector is connected rigidly to the human head. Each chain has five degrees-of-freedom (DOF) and applies a constraint on the motion of the end-effector. As a result, this parallel mechanism allows two DOFs to the end-effector. These are (i) forward flexion or lateral bending of the head and (ii) vertical translation. An important motivation for the current design with RRUR structure is to characterize the range of forward flexion/lateral bending of the head-neck with this structure and the vertical translation to the end-effector. A physical prototype was constructed and tested to evaluate the performance of this mechanism in hardware for the proposed application.
期刊介绍:
Robotica is a forum for the multidisciplinary subject of robotics and encourages developments, applications and research in this important field of automation and robotics with regard to industry, health, education and economic and social aspects of relevance. Coverage includes activities in hostile environments, applications in the service and manufacturing industries, biological robotics, dynamics and kinematics involved in robot design and uses, on-line robots, robot task planning, rehabilitation robotics, sensory perception, software in the widest sense, particularly in respect of programming languages and links with CAD/CAM systems, telerobotics and various other areas. In addition, interest is focused on various Artificial Intelligence topics of theoretical and practical interest.