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Design and Experimental Evaluation of Wearable Lower Extremity Exoskeleton with Gait Self-adaptivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2019

Wenkang Wang ,
Liancun Zhang ,
Kangjian Cai ,
Zhiheng Wang ,
Bainan Zhang  and
Qiang Huang
Wenkang Wang
Affiliation:
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mails: wangwenkang.hi@163.com; 7420171207@bit.edu.cn; wangzhiheng1111@163.com School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mail: 7420161076@bit.edu.cn
Liancun Zhang*
Affiliation:
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mails: wangwenkang.hi@163.com; 7420171207@bit.edu.cn; wangzhiheng1111@163.com
Kangjian Cai
Affiliation:
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mails: wangwenkang.hi@163.com; 7420171207@bit.edu.cn; wangzhiheng1111@163.com
Zhiheng Wang
Affiliation:
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mails: wangwenkang.hi@163.com; 7420171207@bit.edu.cn; wangzhiheng1111@163.com
Bainan Zhang
Affiliation:
School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mail: 7420161076@bit.edu.cn Institute of Manned Space System Engineering, China Academy of Space Technology, Beijing 100094, China
Qiang Huang
Affiliation:
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. E-mails: wangwenkang.hi@163.com; 7420171207@bit.edu.cn; wangzhiheng1111@163.com Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100081, China. E-mail: qhuang@bit.edu.cn State Key Lab of Intelligent Control and Decision of Complex System, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: zhliancun@bit.edu.cn
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Summary

In this paper, we present a passive lower extremity exoskeleton with a simple structure and a light weight. The exoskeleton does not require any external energy source and can achieve energy transfer only by human body’s own gravity. The exoskeleton is self-adaptive to human gait to achieve basic matching therewith. During walking, pulling forces are generated through Bowden cables by pressing plantar power output devices by feet, and the forces are transmitted to the exoskeleton through a crank-slider mechanism to enable the exoskeleton to provide torques for the ankle and knee joints as required by the human body during the stance phase and the swing phase. Our self-developed gait detection system is used to perform experiments on kinematics, dynamics and metabolic cost during walking of the human body wearing the exoskeleton in different states. The experimental results show that the exoskeleton has the greatest influence on motion of the ankle joint and has the least influence on hip joint. With the increase in elastic coefficient of the spring, the torques generated at the joints by the exoskeleton increase. When walking with wearing k3EF exoskeleton at a speed of 0.5 m/s, it can save the most metabolic cost, reaching 13.63%.

Keywords

Lower extremity exoskeletonGait self-adaptivityPassiveMechanical designExperimental evaluation
Type
Articles
Information
Robotica , Volume 37 , Special Issue 12: Wearable Robotics: Dynamics, Control and Applications , December 2019 , pp. 2035 - 2055
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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