title: Design of a rotary passive viscoelastic joint for wearable robots.
abstract: In the design of wearable robots that strictly interact with the human body and, in general, in any robotics application that involves the human component, the possibility of having modular joints able to produce a viscoelastic behaviour is very useful to achieve an efficient and safe human-robot interaction and to give rise to emergent dynamical behaviors. In this paper we propose the design of a compact, passive, rotary viscoelastic joint for assistive wearable robotics applications. The system integrates two functionally distinct sub-modules: one to render a desired torsional stiffness profile and the other to provide a desired torsional damping. Concepts and design choices regarding the overall architecture and the single components are presented and discussed. A viscoelastic model of the system has been developed and the design of the joint is presented.
authors.affiliation: Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Laboratory of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Giorgio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Carpino
authors.forename: Dino
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Accoto
authors.forename: Michelangelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Di Palo
authors.forename: Nevio Luigi
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Tagliamonte
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sergi
authors.forename: Eugenio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Guglielmelli
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D007596:Joints / Q000502:physiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*