Development and Analysis of an Electrically Actuated Lower Extremity Assistive Exoskeleton

An electrically actuated lower extremity exoskeleton is developed, in which only the knee joint is actuated actively while other joints linked by elastic elements are actuated passively. This paper describes the critical design criteria and presents the process of design and calculation of the actuation system. A flexible physical Human-Robot-Interaction (pHRI) measurement device is designed and applied to detect the human movement, which comprises two force sensors and two gasbags attached to the inner surface of the connection cuff. An online adaptive pHRI minimization control strategy is proposed and implemented to drive the robotic exoskeleton system to follow the motion trajectory of human limb. The measured pHRI information is fused by the Variance Weighted Average (VIVA) method. The Mean Square Values (MST) of pHRI and control torque are utilized to evaluate the performance of the exoskeleton. To improve the comfort level and reduce energy consumption, the gravity compensation is taken into consideration when the control law is designed. Finally, practical experiments are performed on healthy users. Experimental results show that the proposed system can assist people to walk and the outlined control strategy is valid and effective.