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Low volume industrial productions are rarely highly automated because of the related costs. Variable production requires flexible automation with close human robot interaction. An exoskeleton may exactly provide these features to enhance industrial production. This article highlights the difficulties related to using exoskeletons in an industrial setting. Moreover, it introduces the Robo-Mate project – an EU funded project – targeted to address the application of an exoskeleton in industry.

This paper presents investigations for development of an assistive exoskeleton device for elderly mobility. This exoskeleton is designed to enhance the lower limb and provide support torque in order to augment the torque of knee and hip during the walking cycle. PID Control is designed and implemented in this work. Due to the complexity in identifying the lower limb musculoskeletal system with traditional mathematical approaches, the visual Nastran 4D software is used for development of simulation model of the exoskeleton and a humanoid. Simulation results demonstrating the performance of the adopted approach are presented and discussed.

This work presented in this paper focuses on development of assistive robotic control approach for the upper extremities. A set-point tracking position control structure with proportional, integral and derivative (PID) controller is considered. A spiral dynamic optimization algorithm is utilized for tuning of the PID gains. The control strategy is tested and evaluated within simulation model of upper extremities. The results show that good position tracking performance is achieved with the developed control approach.