Abstract
The wearable powered exoskeleton is a human-robot cooperation system that integrates the strength of a robot with human intelligence. This paper presents the research results into a powered hip exoskeleton (PH-EXOS) designed to provide locomotive assistance to individuals with walking impediments. The Bowden cable actuated exoskeleton has an anthropomorphic structure with six degrees of freedom (DOF) in order to match the human hip anatomy and enable natural interaction with the user. The mechanical structure, the actuation system, and the interaction kinematics of PH-EXOS are optimized to achieve preferable manoeuvrability and harmony. For the control of the exoskeleton, a real-time control system is established in xPC target environment based on Matlab/RTW. A Cascaded PID controller is developed to perform the trajectories tracking tasks in passive control mode. Besides, based on the pressure information on the thigh, a fuzzy adaptive controller is developed to perform walking assistance tasks in active control mode. Preliminary treadmill walking experiments on a healthy subject were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed device and control approaches in reducing walking effort.
Highlights
The powered exoskeleton is a type of wearable robot system working in parallel with human limbs and combin‐ ing the strength of a robot with human intelligence [1]
This paper presents a novel 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) hip joint exoskeleton named powered hip exoskeleton (PH-EXOS) for walking assistance
Each active joint of the exoskeleton is actuated by a flexible Bowden cable actuation system, which plays a significant role in provid‐ ing remote power transmission and simplifying the structure design
Summary
The powered exoskeleton is a type of wearable robot system working in parallel with human limbs and combin‐ ing the strength of a robot with human intelligence [1]. For lower-limb exoskeletons, applications include walking assistance for elderly individuals, rehabil‐ itation of patients with physical disabilities [3], and power amplification for soldiers. For the initial motivation of developing a lower-limb exoskeleton, the control system design is a significant challenge in providing functional locomotion. The exoskeleton is required to automat‐ ically follow human movement and provide additional torque at the joints of the user and, as a consequence, decrease metabolic energy consumption. Tsukuba University in Japan developed an assistive exoskeleton named HAL (hybrid assistive limb) for supporting physical disabled individuals by analysing the disability percentage and amplifying the joint torque of wearer [7]. A brand-new powered hip exoskeleton (PHEXOS) is presented, with the objective of assisting the lower limb motion of the individuals having walking impedi‐ ments.
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