Super Twisting Control of Passive Gait Training Exoskeleton Driven by Pneumatic Muscles

Abstract

Pneumatic Muscles (PMs) - driven exoskeleton has a promising prospect in the field of rehabilitation and assistance, because of the PMs intrinsic features of compliance and high force-to-weight ratio. However, the precise control of PMs-driven exoskeleton still remains a challenging problem due to the hysteresis, time-varying parameters of PMs and complexity of the mechanism. To solve this problem, this paper presents a super twisting controller (STC), essentially a second-order sliding mode control, to realize the human gait tracking control of lower limb exoskeleton. As a result, the disturbances and uncertainties of the system can be handled, and the chattering caused by the traditional sliding mode control (SMC) could be eliminated. The stability of the closed-loop system is ensured according to the Lyapunov theorem. In addition, we conduct experiments in real exoskeleton system and the results illustrate the validity of the super twisting algorithm. Pneumatic Muscles (PMs) - driven exoskeleton has a promising prospect in the field of rehabilitation and assistance, because of the PMs' intrinsic features of compliance and high force-to-weight ratio. However, the precise control of PMs-driven exoskeleton still remains a challenging problem due to the hysteresis, time-varying parameters of PMs and complexity of the mechanism. To solve this problem, this paper presents a super twisting controller (STC), essentially a second-order sliding mode control, to realize the human gait tracking control of lower limb exoskeleton. As a result, the disturbances and uncertainties of the system can be handled, and the chattering caused by the traditional sliding mode control (SMC) could be eliminated. The stability of the closed-loop system is ensured according to the Lyapunov theorem. In addition, we conduct experiments in real exoskeleton system and the results illustrate the validity of the super twisting algorithm..