Nanyang Technological University

Graduate Student, School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

PhD student

Thesis Title: Design and development of an ergonomic exoskeleton for human wrist

About

The human wrist and hand are often taken for granted and overlooked in everyday movement. Simple tasks such as grasping or holding an object would be near impossible without the proper function of the hand and wrist, but yet it can be commonly observed that the major focus of studies on upper-limb motor control is mostly restricted to shoulder-elbow coordination. However, the wrist, which together with the hand is involved in most of daily living activities, has received much less attention in ergonomic research.

Compared to the decades of quantitative studies on reaching-movements for robot-assisted rehabilitation for the shoulder-elbow districts, it can be ascertain that currently there is a lack of quantitative knowledge to support the design of intelligent robot assisted rehabilitation for wrist rotation. In fact, recent preliminary studies have highlighted how ongoing wrist robots (presently designed to take into account biomechanical constraints but not neural constraints) may not be compatible with natural kinematic synergies, i.e. coordination of multi-joint movements in redundant tasks. This lack of knowledge urged me to work in this area under the supervision of Prof. Domenico Campolo.

Contact Information