Activities of daily living (ADL) such as writing, eating, and object manipulation are challenging for patients suffering from pathological tremors. Pathological tremors are involuntary, rhythmic, and oscillatory movements that manifest in limbs, the head, and other body parts. Among the existing treatments, mechanical loading through wearable rehabilitation devices is popular for being non-invasive and innocuous to the human body. In particular, a few exoskeletons are developed to actively mitigate pathological tremors in the forearm. While these forearm exoskeletons can effectively suppress tremors, they still require significant improvements in ergonomics to be implemented for ADL applications. The ergonomics of the exoskeleton can be improved via design and motion control pertaining to human biomechanics, which leads to better efficiency, comfort, and safety for the user. The wrist is a complicated biomechanical joint with two coupled degrees of freedom (DOF) pivotal to human manipulation capabilities. Existing exoskeletons either do not provide tremor suppression in all wrist DOFs, or can be restrictive to the natural wrist movement. This motivates us to explore a better exoskeleton solution for wrist tremor suppression. We propose TAWE - a wearable exoskeleton that provides alleviation of pathological tremors in all wrist DOFs. The design adopts a 6-DOF rigid linkage mechanism to ensure unconstrained natural wrist movements, and wearability features without extreme tight-binding or precise positioning for convenient ADL applications. When TAWE is equipped by the user, a closed-kinematic chain is formed between the exoskeleton and the forearm. We analyze the coupled multibody dynamics of the human-exoskeleton system, which reveals a few robotic control problems - (i) The first problem is the identification of the unknown wrist kinematics within the closed kinematic chain. We realize the real-time wrist kinematic identification (WKI) based on a novel ellipsoidal joint model that describes the coupled wrist kinematics, and a sparsity-promoting Extended Kalman Filter for the efficient real-time regression; (ii) The second problem is the exoskeleton motion control for tremor suppression. We design a robust adaptive controller (IO-RAC) based on model reference adaptive control and inverse optimal robust control theories, which can identify the unknown model inertia and load, and provide stable tracking control under disturbance; (iii) The third problem is the estimation of voluntary movement from tremorous motion data for the motion planning of exoskeleton. We develop a lightweight and data-driven voluntary movement estimator (SVR-VME) based on least square support vector regression, which can estimate voluntary movements with real-time signal adaptability and significantly reduced time delay. Simulations and experiments are carried out to test the individual performance of robotic control algorithms proposed in this study, and their combined real-time performance when integrated into the full exoskeleton control system. We also manufacture the prototype of TAWE, which helps us validate the proposed solutions in tremor alleviation exoskeletons. Overall, the design of TAWE meets the expectations in its compliance with natural wrist movement and simple wearability. The exoskeleton control system can execute stably in real-time, identify unknown system kinematics and dynamics, estimate voluntary movements, and suppress tremors in the wrist. The results also indicate a few limitations in the current approaches, which require further investigations and improvements. Finally, the proposed exoskeleton control solutions are developed based on generic formulations, which can be applied to not only TAWE, but also other rehabilitation exoskeletons. / Doctor of Philosophy / Activities of daily living (ADL) such as writing, eating, and object manipulation are challenging for patients suffering from pathological tremors, which affect millions of people worldwide. Tremors are involuntary, rhythmic, and oscillatory movements. In recent years, rehabilitation exoskeletons are developed as non-invasive solutions to pathological tremor alleviation. The wrist is pivotal to human manipulation capabilities. Existing exoskeletons either do not provide tremor suppression in all wrist movements, or can be restrictive to natural wrist movements. To explore a better solution with improved performance and ergonomics, we propose TAWE - a wearable exoskeleton that provides tremor alleviation in full wrist motions. TAWE adopts a high-degree-of-freedom mechanism to ensure unconstrained natural wrist movements, and wearability features for convenient ADL applications. The coupled dynamics between the forearm and TAWE leads to a few robotic control problems. We propose novel real-time robotic control solutions in the identification of unknown wrist kinematics, robust adaptive exoskeleton control for tremor suppression, and voluntary movement estimation for motion planning. Later, simulations and experiments validate the TAWE prototype and its exoskeleton control framework for tremor alleviation, and reveal limitations in the current approaches that require further investigations and improvements. Finally, the proposed exoskeleton control solutions are developed based on generic formulations, which can be applied to not only TAWE, but also other rehabilitation exoskeletons.

The implications of gait disorder, muscle weakness, and spinal cord injuries for work and age-related mobility degradation have increased the need for rehabilitation exoskeletons. Specifically, the hip rehabilitation exoskeletons due to a high percentage of the mechanical power is generated by this join during the gait cycle. Additionally, the prolonged hospitalisation after hip replacement and acetabular surgeries that affect human mobility, the social-economic impacts and the quality of life. For these reasons, a hip rehabilitation exoskeleton was our focus in this research, as it will contribute being a sustainable solution to take over the burden of physiotherapy and let patients perform their rehabilitation at home or outdoors.  This thesis details an approach of creating a hip rehabilitation exoskeleton, starting with modelling, simulating, and controlling the rehabilitation hip joint in a based-simulation environment. The mathematical model and the reason for using a series elastic actuator in the hip joint to execute the movement in a sagittal plane are more detailed. Because trajectory tracking is commonly used for controlling rehabilitation exoskeletons to ensure safe and reliable motion tracking methods; therefore, two desired torque signals were tested and analysed with the optimal linear quadratic regulator (LQR). The experiments were performed using two torque signals of a healthy hip joint—representing the sit-to-stand (STS) and the walking activity for their importance in lower limb movements. However, the mathematical model used as a basis of the optimal control strategy is usually influenced by multiple sources of uncertainties. Therefore, four case studies of various optimal control strategies were tested for a twofold reason: to choose the most optimal control strategy, and to test the energy consumption of these cases during the STS and walking movements, because the long-term goal is to produce a lightweight and reliable rehabilitation hip exoskeleton. The research showed compelling evidence that tuning the control strategy will not influence the robustness of an optimal controller only, but affect the energy consumption during the STS and walking activity, which needs to be considered in exoskeleton control design regarding its applications. / Behovet av exoskelett för rehabilitering har ökat p.g.a. komplikationer som uppstår vid arbete och åldersrelaterad försämring. Komplikationerna består bland annat av gångstörning, muskelsvaghet och ryggmärgsskador. Speciellt höftexoskelett avsett för rehabilitering är extra intressant på grund av att rehabilitering inom detta område omfattar långvarig sjukhusvistelse efter höftprotes- och acetabulära operationer. Höftleden är en av de leder som utsätts för relativt höga mekaniska påfrestningar och minskad rörelseförmåga leder inte sällan till socioekonomiska effekter och minskad livskvalité. Av denna anledning kommer höftexoskelett för rehabilitering vara det primära området i denna avhandling då det kommer att vara en lösning för att minska belastningen inom sjukvård och låta patienter utföra sin rehabilitering hemma på egen hand. Denna avhandling beskriver en metod för att skapa ett höftexoskelett avsett för rehabilitering med början i modellering, simulering och kontroll av en höftled av exoskelett i en simuleringsmiljö. Genom att använda ett serieelastiskt manöverdon för att utföra en höftledsrörelse i ett sagittalt så uppnås en mer detaljerad matematisk modell. Genom att använda banspårning, som vanligtvis används för att kontrollera exoskelett för rehabilitering för att säkerställa säkra och pålitliga rörelsespårningsmetoder, så analyserades två vridmomentssignaler mot en linjär kvadratisk regulator (LQR). Simuleringarna utfördes med hjälp av två vridmomentsignaler som representerar sitt-till-stå (STS) och gångaktivitet hos en frisk höftled. Den matematiska modellen som används för att hitta den optimala kontrollstrategin påverkas vanligtvis av flera osäkerhetskällor. Därför testades fyra fallstudier av olika optimala kontrollstrategier för två skäl: den ena för att välja den mest optimala kontrollstrategin emellan och den andra för att mäta energiförbrukningen för dessa STS och gångrörelse så att vi kan producera ett lätt och pålitligt höftexoskelett avsett för rehabilitering. Forskningen visar övertygande bevis för att inställning av styrstrategin inte bara kommer att påverka robustheten hos en optimal styrenhet utan även påverkar energiförbrukningen under STS och gångaktivitet vilket måste beaktas vid design av exoskelett.