Comfort-Centered Design of a Lightweight and Backdrivable Knee Exoskeleton

This paper presents design principles for comfort-centered wearable robots and their application in a lightweight and backdrivable knee exoskeleton. The mitigation of discomfort is treated as mechanical design and control issues and three solutions are proposed in this paper: 1) a new wearable structure optimizes the strap attachment configuration and suit layout to ameliorate excessive shear forces of conventional wearable structure design; 2) rolling knee joint and double-hinge mechanisms reduce the misalignment in the sagittal and frontal plane, without increasing the mechanical complexity and inertia, respectively; 3) a low impedance mechanical transmission reduces the reflected inertia and damping of the actuator to human, thus the exoskeleton is highly-backdrivable. Kinematic simulations demonstrate that misalignment between the robot joint and knee joint can be reduced by 74% at maximum knee flexion. In experiments, the exoskeleton in the unpowered mode exhibits 1.03 Nm root mean square (RMS) low resistive torque. The torque control experiments demonstrate 0.31 Nm RMS torque tracking error in three human subjects.Comment: 8 pages, 16figures, Journa

Knee Exoskeletons Design Approaches to Boost Strength Capability: A Review

Exoesqueleto para incrementar la fuerza en las rodillasThere are different devices to increase the strength capacity of people with walking problems. These devices can be classified into exoskeletons, orthotics, and braces. This review aims to identify the state of the art in the design of these medical devices, based on an analysis of patents and literature. However, there are some difficulties in processing the records due to the lack of filters and standardization in the names, generating discrepancies between the search engines, among others. Concerning the patents, 74 patents were analyzed using search engines such as Google Patents, Derwent, The Lens, Patentscope, and Espacenet over the past ten years. A bibliometric analysis was performed using 63 scientific reports from Web of Science and The Lens in the same period for scientific communications. The results show a trend to use the mechanical design of exoskeletons based on articulated rigid structures and elements that provide force to move the structure. These are generally two types: (a) elastic elements and (b) electromechanical elements. The United States accounts for 32% of the technological patents reviewed. The results suggest that the use of exoskeletons or orthoses customized to the users’ needs will continue to increase over the years due to the worldwide growth in disability, particularly related to mobility difficulties and technologies related to the combined use of springs and actuators

Study on control of a robotic orthosis actuated by pneumatic artificial muscle for gait rehabilitation

芝浦工業大学2019年

Design and Control of Robotic Systems for Lower Limb Stroke Rehabilitation

Lower extremity stroke rehabilitation exhausts considerable health care resources, is labor intensive, and provides mostly qualitative metrics of patient recovery. To overcome these issues, robots can assist patients in physically manipulating their affected limb and measure the output motion. The robots that have been currently designed, however, provide assistance over a limited set of training motions, are not portable for in-home and in-clinic use, have high cost and may not provide sufficient safety or performance. This thesis proposes the idea of incorporating a mobile drive base into lower extremity rehabilitation robots to create a portable, inherently safe system that provides assistance over a wide range of training motions. A set of rehabilitative motion tasks were established and a six-degree-of-freedom (DOF) motion and force-sensing system was designed to meet high-power, large workspace, and affordability requirements. An admittance controller was implemented, and the feasibility of using this portable, low-cost system for movement assistance was shown through tests on a healthy individual. An improved version of the robot was then developed that added torque sensing and known joint elasticity for use in future clinical testing with a flexible-joint impedance controller

Design and control of soft rehabilitation robots actuated by pneumatic muscles: State of the art

Robot-assisted rehabilitation has become a new mainstream trend for the treatment of stroke patients with movement disability. Pneumatic muscle (PM) is one of the most promising actuators for rehabilitation robots, due to its inherent compliance and safety features. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review on the soft rehabilitation robots driven by pneumatic muscles. This review discusses up to date mechanical structures and control strategies for PMs-actuated rehabilitation robots. A variety of state-of-the-art soft rehabilitation robots are classified and reviewed according to the actuation configurations. Special attentions are paid to control strategies under different mechanical designs, with advanced control approaches to overcome PM’s highly nonlinear and time-varying behaviors and to enhance the adaptability to different patients. Finally, we analyze and highlight the current research gaps and the future directions in this field, which is potential for providing a reliable guidance on the development of advanced soft rehabilitation robots

Design, control, and pilot study of a lightweight and modular robotic exoskeleton for walking assistance after spinal cord injury

Walking rehabilitation using exoskeletons is of high importance to maximize independence and improve the general well-being of spinal cord injured subjects. We present the design and control of a lightweight and modular robotic exoskeleton to assist walking in spinal cord injured subjects who can control hip flexion, but lack control of knee and ankle muscles. The developed prototype consists of two robotic orthoses, which are powered by a motor-harmonic drive actuation system that controls knee flexion–extension. This actuation module is assembled on standard passive orthoses. Regarding the control, the stance-to-swing transition is detected using two inertial measurement units mounted on the tibial supports, and then the corresponding motor performs a predefined flexion–extension cycle that is personalized to the specific patient’s motor function. The system is portable by means of a backpack that contains an embedded computer board, the motor drivers, and the battery. A preliminary biomechanical evaluation of the gait-assistive device used by a female patient with incomplete spinal cord injury at T11 is presented. Results show an increase of gait speed (+24.11%), stride length (+7.41%), and cadence (+15.56%) when wearing the robotic orthoses compared with the case with passive orthoses. Conversely, a decrease of lateral displacement of the center of mass (-19.31%) and step width (-13.37% right step, -8.81% left step) are also observed, indicating gain of balance. The biomechanical assessment also reports an overall increase of gait symmetry when wearing the developed assistive device.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version