Fabrication of Voice Operated Exo-Skeleton

Mechanical engineering

The designing of fully functioning MOTORISED prosthetic arm with coordinating speed of response and strength is the aim of upper extremity prosthetics research. Unfortunately, current prosthetic arms and collaborating techniques are still a long way from this aim. The current state-of-the-art prosthesis can be considered to be a tool rather than an upper limb replacement. The pneumatic prosthesis as a tool makes no pretense of replacing the lost arm but tries to replace some functions that were lost. The prosthesis is the device which can be worn as per will and can be removed when not wanted. Many efforts in this field are taken to make pneumatic prosthetic as an ideal upper limb replacement, however, current prosthetic arms are limited to be used as tools. The major factors limiting pneumatic prosthesis to tools are practical ones due to the heavy weight, less power, and size of the component as well as the difficulty in finding appropriate control sources to control the number of degrees of freedom. Of these the important drawback is the latter one. As a result, upper- limb prosthetics research is dominated by considerations of appropriate controls for controlling the degrees of freedom. Still, the importance of better pneumatic actuators and better multifunctional mechanisms cannot be ignored. Current motorized prosthetic arm are of single degree of freedom. Generally, vision is the primary source of feedback for the device, the number of functions that are controlled in parallel at one time is two. Otherwise, the mental loading becomes excessive and impossible. Switch, pneumatic actuators, control valves are the primary modes of control for today’s upper-limb prosthetic arms. The upper limb prosthetic arms are developed according the tasks they need to perform or according to type of person whom it is wore by. The pneumatic prosthetic exoskeleton1 used for giving additional strength to normal people in order to make them do extreme work. Therefore pneumatic prosthetic arm has found its applications in military personnel and heavy industry personnel. The exoskeleton also finds its application in physically weak people to regain their power they lost after stroke. Generally speaking, the shortcomings of the arm prostheses that are now clinically available are the following: The pneumatic prosthetic arm has far fewer degrees of freedom than the normal arm for which they are intended to act as substitute. Thus they perform certain tasks in difficult manner and in some cases only with great difficulty for the amputee. The controls for a given motion are not related to the actions of a normal person which cause the corresponding motion of a normal arm. For example, flexion of the "elbow" of the pneumatic prosthetic arm may result only from movement of the shoulder of the amputee whereas in a normal person elbow and shoulder motions are independent. The result of this is that the amputee must learn an entirely new pattern of activity in order to make the pneumatic prosthetic arm useful to him, and his ultimate performance is often limited because the degree of freedom which is required are few, and the constraints of the control system are so many. This project reviews the upper extremity exoskeleton with different functions, actuators and degree of freedom (DOF). Among the functions, power-assist2 and rehabilitation3 have been highlighted In addition; the structure of exoskeleton is separated by its DOF in terms of Upper extremity4.

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