Wearable Cable-driven Lower Limb Assistive Device with Demonstration System for Walking Assistance

Abstract

Flexible assistive device has become an active research topic in recent years due to their promising application prospect in rehabilitation and medical care. Existing devices suffer from the balance between wearable lightness and control effectiveness. This paper introduces a cable-driven lower limb assistive device with a demonstration system for walking assistance. We rely on plantar pressure sensors to determine the gait phase and employ pose sensors to obtain the trajectory of the hip joint angle. We model the human lower limb based on the Lagrangian method and employ the PID algorithm to control the motor’s drive torque during the swing phase. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the control algorithm on the model’s trajectory tracking and the robustness to disturbance of the flexible device to provide partial walking assistance. Additionally, a software demonstration system based on Unity 3D is designed to monitor the wear’s motion status in real-time, which provides visual feedback for better rehabilitation training.