Intelligent Mesh for Self Reconfigurability of an Exoskeleton Arm

Abstract This paper presents a new technique for a reconfigurable exoskeleton which consists of a connected network of small sized holonic robots enwrapping the human body limbs and more specifically, in this paper, the human arm. The connection control of the reconfigurable exoskeleton decides upon the necessity of a “disconnect”,” reconnect” for chosen holons so as to balance any new load at the human joints. The intelligent controller carries out its decisions on the evaluation of stress at connections between holons of a previous configuration comparing them for a new actual need. This decision is based on a graph theoretic method, where stress calculations are carried out using finite element method. The paper demonstrates the performance of our approach on a simulation of hyper redundant network of holons wrapping a human arm.