This dissertation summarizes the research effort to develop a novel, three degree-of-freedom device that is ideally suited as a robotic wrist or platform manipulator. Because of its similarity to the human wrist, this invention has been named the "Carpal Wrist." Much like its natural counterpart, the Carpal Wrist has eight primary links, corresponding to the eight carpal bones of the human wrist, a parallel actuation scheme, similar to the flexor and extensor carpi muscles along the forearm, and an open interior passage, which forms a protected tunnel for routing hoses and electrical cables, much like the well-known carpal tunnel. The Carpal Wrist also has the significant advantages of possessing closed-form forward and inverse kinematic solutions and a large, dexterous workspace that is free of interior singularities (either considered separately or as part of a manipulator arm). As a result of its symmetric parallel architecture, the Wrist can handle a large payload capacity and can easily be adapted to a variety of actuation schemes. While parallel-architecture manipulators have long been recognized for their high-rigidity and large payload-to-weight capacity, few have been developed for application, primarily because of complications in kinematic and dynamic modeling. The mathematical model of any manipulator must be developed in order to allow the necessary motion control of the device. The mathematical model provides a mapping from the input space (called joint space) to the output space (called tool space) of the manipulator. Given a desired task in terms of motion of the robot tool, the mathematical model determines the required motor input parameters. Advanced manipulator performance through automatic control becomes possible when the model includes inertial or dynamic effects of the manipulator and tool. The research leading to the development of the Carpal Wrist is significant because it presents a complete kinematic and dynamic model of a parallel-architecture manipulator, and thus will provide significant improvement over current serial robot technology. This research was funded in part by TRIAD Investors Corporation (University Partners), Baltimore MD. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T15:08:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao - Fernando Goncalves Abadia.pdf: 2172647 bytes, checksum: 521c16d1c14b335efd25247e9a66c082 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-04-19 / Rehabilitation robotics involves the development of active devices for various processes in the health field. In the rehabilitation case, it replace the physical assistance by a robotic device, under the supervision of the therapist. According to some authors, there is much evidence that repetitive movements can help in the rehabilitation of stroke patients. Therefore, there is feasibility of building a low cost robotic manipulator of an anthropomorphic arm with few degrees of freedom in the rehabilitation of patients in early brain injury phase (muscle hypotony phase). The objective of the study outlined here is to determine, through simulation, the appropriate kinematic of an anthropomorphic robotic manipulator that best approximate the functional movements to be relearned by stroke patients. The kinemetry was the method used to measure the characteristics of these movements. The data acquisition was performed from three subjects who performed the movements of combing hair, drinking from cup, bring it to his mouth and waving, greeting movement. These data were compared with the direct and inverse kinematics of the simulated manipulator in MatLab environment. The results showed that, despite the limitations of movements, the simulated manipulator is feasible for rehabilitation of patients who are in the initial phase of stroke, with a low cost of implementation. / A reabilitação robótica é uma ciência que permite o desenvolvimento de dispositivos ativos para vários processos no campo da saúde. No caso da reabilitação, substitui a assistência física por um dispositivo robótico, sob a supervisão do terapeuta. Segundo alguns autores, há muitas evidências de que os movimentos repetitivos podem ajudar na reabilitação de pacientes vítimas de choques traumáticos ou de acidente vascular encefálico - AVE. Nesta perspectiva há viabilidade de se construir um manipulador robótico de um braço antropomórfico com poucos graus de liberdade na reabilitação dos pacientes na fase inicial do AVE (fase de hipotonia muscular) visando baixos custos. Neste aspecto, o objetivo do presente projeto é determinar, por meio de simulação, as apropriadas modelagens da cinemática de um manipulador robótico de um braço antropomórfico que melhor se aproximem dos movimentos funcionais a fim de serem reaprendidos pelos pacientes. A cinemetria foi o método utilizado para avaliar as características cinemáticas destes movimentos, a partir da coleta de dados realizada com uma amostra constituída por três sujeitos, que realizaram os movimentos de pentear os cabelos, pegar um copo e levá-lo à boca e acenar cumprimentando. Estes dados foram comparados à cinemática direta e inversa do manipulador simulado em ambiente MatLab. Os resultados mostraram que, apesar das limitações dos movimentos, o manipulador simulado é viável para reabilitação de pacientes que se encontram na fase inicial do AVE, apresentando um baixo custo de implementação.