xLimb: Wearable Robot Arm with Storable and Extendable Mechanisms.

To develop a wearable robot arm that can support our daily activities, we aim to propose a novel wearable device, xLimb, that can feature multiple functions of both storability and extendibility without obstruction to wearers. The proposed device will be mounted on the upper arm to ensure that the center of mass of the device will remain close to the wearer, whereby the exerted burden on the wearer and the servomotor can be decreased. Meanwhile, the folding state provided by the storable mechanism enables the proposed device to maintain a compact size, to avoid hindering the wearer’s main activities when not in use. We developed a prototype of our xLimb to verify the proposed mechanisms and conducted a user study with different usage scenarios for participants to experience. The evaluation results indicate that the proposed device can improve user experience as a wearable robot arm.