Analysis and Conceptual Design of a Passive Upper Limb Exoskeleton

This paper reports a preliminary design of a passive upper limb exoskeleton with 6 degrees of freedom to support workers in industrial environments in a vast range of repetitive tasks. Leveraging the detailed analytical model developed in previous research, the best springs configuration to balance the system during motion is designed through an efficient optimization routine. The model is validated with commercial software for specific overhead tasks, and aspects of the proposed balancer physical implementation are evaluated. Index Terms—Upper Limb Exoskeleton, Wearable Devices, Design Optimization, Virtual Prototyping, Gravity balancing.