Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2017
24th ABCM International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Design and development of a load cell in an intelligent elbow crutch for an exoskeleton.
Submission Author:
Felipe Matias Cortez Trigueiro , RN
Co-Authors:
Márcio Araújo, Felipe Matias Cortez Trigueiro
Presenter: Felipe Matias Cortez Trigueiro
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2017.COB17-2190
Abstract
This work presents the development of a smart elbow crutch equipped with a load cell and an embedded electronic system. This crutch is used by users of a robotic exoskeleton for lower limbs, besides the function of assisting in the balance and safety of the user, it is used as a Human Machine Interface (HMI) capable of sending a series of high level commands to the robotic exoskeleton called Ortholeg, like for example sitting, standing up, down stairs, among others. All these functions will be based on the force measured by the load cell at the time of the use of the exoskeleton, which upon reaching a predetermined value, will make the embedded computer interpret as being a command to be performed. The load cell was designed to be coupled to the crutch and for this purpose stress analyses were performed on the crutch in normal use condition. The measured efforts are sent to an A/D converter which then sends the data to a microcontroller. All information measured on the crutch is transmitted via Bluetooth to the embedded exoskeleton computer. The tests showed the functioning of the measurement, acquisition and shipment system, as well as the simulation of the loads on the crutch.
Keywords
exoskeleton, microcontroller, Crutches, Load cell
