Active Impedance Control of a lower limb exoskeleton to assist sit-to-stand movement

Abstract

As an important movement of the daily living activities, sit-to-stand (STS) movement is usually a difficult task facing elderly and dependent people. To provide appropriate power assistance for the sit-to-stand movement, a novel intention-based Active Impedance Control (AIC) strategy applied on a lower limb exoskeleton is proposed in this paper. The AIC is able to adapt the mechanical impedance of the human-exoskeleton system towards a desired one using the exoskeleton's power assistance. In the AIC structure, a human joint torque observer is designed to estimate the human joint torques using joint angles information instead of electromyography (EMG) or force/torque sensors; a time-varying desired impedance model is proposed according the wearer's lower limb motion ability. Simulations were implemented to illustrate the characteristics and performances of the proposed approach. Experiments with a healthy subject were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experiments show satisfactory results in terms of appropriate power assist based on the wearer's motion intention.