Real-Time Estimation of Glenohumeral Joint Rotation Center With Cable-Driven Arm Exoskeleton (CAREX)-A Cable-Based Arm Exoskeleton.

In the past few years, the authors have proposed several prototypes of a Cable-driven upper ARm EXoskeleton (CAREX) for arm rehabilitation. One of the assumptions of CAREX was that the glenohumeral joint rotation center (GH-c) remains stationary in the inertial frame during motion, which leads to inaccuracy in the kinematic model and may hamper training performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to estimate GH-c using measurements of shoulder joint angles and cable lengths. This helps in locating the GH-c center appropriately within the kinematic model. As a result, more accurate kinematic model can be used to improve the training of human users. An estimation algorithm is presented to compute the GH-c in real-time. The algorithm was implemented on the latest prototype of CAREX. Simulations and preliminary experimental results are presented to validate the proposed GH-c estimation method.