Gravity Balancing Flexure Spring Mechanisms for Shoulder Support in Assistive Orthoses

Passive shoulder supports show large potential for a wide range of applications, such as assisting activities of daily living and supporting work-related tasks. The rigid-link architecture used in currently available devices, however, may pose an obstacle to finding designs that offer low protrusion and close-to-body alignment. This study...

A Flexure-Based Linear Guide With Torsion Reinforcement Structures

In this study, a flexure-based (compliant) linear guide with a motion range comparable to its footprint is presented. The design consists of two-folded leaf springs on which torsion reinforcement structures are added. Due to these structures, only two-folded leaf springs are needed instead of a minimum of five as in preexisting designs. The...

A compact McKibben muscle based bending actuator for close-to-body application in assistive wearable robots

In this letter we demonstrate a pneumatic bending actuator for upper-limb assistive wearable robots which uses thin McKibben muscles in combination with a flexure strip. The actuator features both active soft actuation and passive gravity support, and in terms of force transmission bridges the gap between the classic rigid type actuators and...

Gravity Balancing Flexure Springs for an Assistive Elbow Orthosis

In this paper, we propose a flexure spring based gravity compensation device which provides assistance to lift the forearm. Three different spring designs are obtained and evaluated. The synthesis method to obtain these is explained in detail and an experimental evaluation validates the desired gravity balancing properties. It is found that in...

Accurate small-scale manipulation

A 3-DoF micro-electromechanical (MEMS) stage has been designed with an innovative integrated feedback system based on thermal sensors. The stage is integrated in the device layer of a silicon-oninsulator-wafer, which means that no assembly is required and the stage can be fabricated using only a single mask. The range of motion is over 160 μm in...