Design of a head massage device

Abstract

The purpose of this final year report is to design a head massage robot to emulate a masseur when he uses his fingers to massage the head of the human scalp.

Taking inspiration from available commercial products around in the market, the author decided to develop a low cost portable head massage robot which is capable to perform the basic function of massage the human scalp automatically.

Conceptual designs have been generated through morphological analysis and conceptual designs evaluation before author selected the final design for further developed and analysis.

A number of essential theories and basic calculations such as Degree of Freedom (DOF) of Planar 4-bar Linkages, Working Envelope of Planar 4-bar Linkages ,Direct Kinematics ,Inverse Kinematics , Kinematics Synthesis and Finite Element Analysis (FEA),approach were applied to the final design of the head massage robot.

The head massage robot being developed has 2 motor embedded on each input link of the 4 bar linkages. Detailed calculation of the trajectory of the end effector indicated that the trajectory path is following a curve line and by making use of this data, suitable operational range of the head massage robot has been identified.

The next challenge would be to improve the design head massage robot to make it more intuitive to human scalp in order to deliver more pleasant experience to the end user by adding more ‘finger’ to the robot and manipulate it to move delicately like fingers massaging on the surface of the scalp.