This paper presents the design and the control performance of a novel dynamic compliant-arm support with parallel elastic actuators that was developed to assist with the daily living activities of those whose arms are compromised by muscular disease or the aging process. The parallel elastic-arm support consists of a compliant mechanism with combined passive and active components for human interaction and to reach the user’s desired positions. The achievement of these tasks requires impedance control, which can change the virtual stiffness, damping coefficients, and equilibrium points of the system; however, the desired-position tracking by the impedance control is limited when the end-effector weight varies according to the equipping of diverse objects. A prompt algorithm regarding weight calibration and friction compensation is adopted to overcome this problem. A result comparison shows that, by accurately assessing the desired workspace, the proposed algorithm is more effective for the accomplishment of the desired activities.

In this paper, a hand exoskeleton actuated by air muscles(soft hand exoskeleton) is introduced. Some soft hand exoskeletons have already been developed to overcome the defects of hand exoskeletons based on linkage and pneumatic piston system.they are usually bulky and do not have enough degree of freedom(DOF). However, soft hand exoskeletons still have defects. Their motions are not precise as linkage based hand exoskeletons, because their actuator, such as air muscle is made of soft materials. So we developed a new linkage which is not bulky and has redundant DOF. It is combined with air muscle in a specific way so that it acts as a guide when air muscle is actuated. Some experiments were conducted to evaluate the validity and usability of our hand exoskeleton.