TitanArm

Check out our website for more info: www.titanarm.com Director's website: www.nikovladimirov.com TitanArm was developed by a team at the University of Pennsylvania. It is a powered upper body exoskeleton for use in physical therapy and assistive mobility applications. We've named the suit Titan after the powerful deities of incredible strength and stamina in Greek mythology. This suit uses a powerful DC motor, coupled with a novel cable drive system for joint actuation at the elbow of the user. Using the suit, the user is able to easily curl up to 40 pounds! We utilize sheathed cables - just like bike brake cables, but larger - allow force transfer from the elbow to the back of the user (where the motor is mounted). This allows our suit to be extra mobile and flexible, making its applications even more versatile. All of the mechanical components were analyzed, designed, and manufactured by our team here at UPenn. Our suit runs off a BeagleBone microcomputer running the main control loop for the exoskeleton. It communicates with an ATmega32-based microcontroller, the M2, over serial UART to do the low level sensor data acquisition and motor control. The BeagleBone also has a wireless dongle that transmits joint angle data (captured through Hall effect sensors, motor encoder values, and rotary potentiometers) from the suit to a base station computer. This would be especially useful in a physical therapy scenario where a doctor could remotely monitor a patient, track improvement, and give meaningful feedback.