Human movement modifications induced by different levels of transparency of an active upper limb exoskeleton

Active upper limb exoskeletons are a potentially powerful tool for neuromotor rehabilitation. This potential depends on several basic control modes, one of them being transparency. In this control mode, the exoskeleton must follow the human movement without altering it, which theoretically implies null interaction efforts. Reaching high, albeit imperfect, levels of transparency requires both an adequate control method and an in-depth evaluation of the impacts of the exoskeleton on human movement. The present paper introduces such an evaluation for three different “transparent” controllers either based on an identification of the dynamics of the exoskeleton, or on force feedback control or on their combination. Therefore, these controllers are likely to induce clearly different levels of transparency by design. The conducted investigations could allow to better understand how humans adapt to transparent controllers, which are necessarily imperfect. A group of fourteen participants were subjected to these three controllers while performing reaching movements in a parasagittal plane. The subsequent analyses were conducted in terms of interaction efforts, kinematics, electromyographic signals and ergonomic feedback questionnaires. Results showed that, when subjected to less performing transparent controllers, participants strategies tended to induce relatively high interaction efforts, with higher muscle activity, which resulted in a small sensitivity of kinematic metrics. In other words, very different residual interaction efforts do not necessarily induce very different movement kinematics. Such a behavior could be explained by a natural human tendency to expend effort to preserve their preferred kinematics, which should be taken into account in future transparent controllers evaluation.