Walking of biped with passive exoskeleton: evaluation of energy consumption

The paper aims to theoretically show the feasibility and efficiency of a passive exoskeleton for a human walking and carrying a load. The human is modeled using a planar bipedal anthropomorphic mechanism. This mechanism consists of a trunk and two identical legs; each leg consists of a thigh, shin, and foot (massless). The exoskeleton is considered also as an anthropomorphic mechanism. The shape and the degrees of freedom of the exoskeleton are identical to the biped (to human)-the topology of the exoskeleton is the same as of the biped (human). Each model of the human and exoskeleton has seven links and six joints. The hip-joint connects the trunk and two thighs of the two legs. If the biped is equipped with an exoskeleton, then the links of this exoskeleton are attached to the corresponding links of the biped and the corresponding hip, knee, and ankle joints coincide. We compare the walking gaits of a biped alone (without exoskeleton) and of a biped equipped with exoskeleton; for both cases the same load is transported. The problem is studied in the framework of a ballistic walking model. During ballistic walking of the biped with exoskeleton, the knee of the support leg is locked, but the knee of the swing leg is unlocked. The locking and unlocking can be realized in the knees of the exoskeleton by any mechanical brake devices without energy consumption. There are no actuators in the exoskeleton. Therefore, we call it a passive exoskeleton. The walking of the biped consists of alternating single- and double-support phases. In our study, the double-support phase is assumed instantaneous. At the instant of this phase, the knee of the previous swing leg is locked and the knee of the previous support leg is unlocked. Numerical results show that during the load transport the human with the exoskeleton spends less energy than human alone. For transportation of a load with mass 40 kg, the economy of the energy is approximately 28%, if the length of the step and its duration are equal to 0.5 m and 0.5 s, respectively.