Augmenting Human with Compact Supernumerary Robotic Limbs

Abstract

This work proposes a compact supernumerary robotic limb that can augment our body physical functions and support the daily activities with an extra wearable robot arm. The proposed device adopts a double-layer scissor unit for the extendable mechanism, which can achieve the distance 2.5 times longer than the forearm length. The proposed device can be mounted on the user’s upper arm and transform into a compact state without any obstruction to wearers. The proposed device is lightweight which results in low amounts of exertion on the wearer. We developed the prototype of the proposed device to demonstrate the proposed mechanisms. We believe that our design methodology can facilitate human augmentation research for practical use.