Many people could benefit from exoskeleton assistance during gait, for either medical or nonmedical purposes. But exoskeletons bring added mass and structure, which in turn require compensating for. In this work, we present a lightweight, low-complexity, soft bilateral ankle exoskeleton for plantarflexion assistance, with a shoe attachment design that can be mounted on top of any pair of shoes. Experimental tests show no significant difference in lower limb kinematics and kinetics when wearing the exoskeleton in zero-torque mode relative to not wearing an exoskeleton, showing that our device does not obstruct healthy gait, and proving it as a compliant and comfortable device, promising to provide effective assistance. Hence, a control system was developed, and additional tests are underway.
To enable the broad adoption of wearable robotic exoskeletons in medical and industrial settings, it is crucial they can adaptively support large repertoires of movements. We propose a new human-machine interface to simultaneously drive bilateral ankle exoskeletons during a range of 'unseen' walking conditions and transitions that were not used for establishing the control interface. The proposed approach used person-specific neuromechanical models to estimate biological ankle joint torques in real-time from measured electromyograms (EMGS) and joint angles. A low-level controller based on a di…
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Wandercraft SAS（旺德工艺有限公司）
This paper presents an active stabilization method for a fully actuated lower-limb exoskeleton. The method was tested on the exoskeleton ATALANTE, which was designed and built by the French start-up company Wandercraft. The main objective of this paper is to present a practical method of realizing more robust walking on hardware through active ankle compensation. The nominal gait was generated through the hybrid zero dynamic framework. The ankles are individually controlled to establish three main directives; (1) keeping the non-stance foot parallel to the ground, (2) maintaining rigid contact…
This work presents a description of the EXOSMOOTH project, oriented to the benchmarking of lower limb exoskeletons performance. In the field of assisted walking by powered lower limb exoskeletons, the EXOSMOOTH project proposes an experiment that targets two scientific questions. The first question is related to the effectiveness of a novel control strategy for smooth assistance. Current assist strategies are based on controllers that switch the assistance level based on the gait segmentation provided by a finite state machine. The proposed strategy aims at managing phase transitions to provid…
Human-like motion is a primary goal for many robotic assistive devices. Emulating the strategy of the human neuromuscular system may aid the control of such powered devices, yet many challenges remain. In this study, we investigated the potential for using the winding filament model (WFM) of muscle to predict the net muscle moment of the ankle. The long-term goal is to use this model to improve ankle control of a commercial powered exoskeleton. The innovation aspects of this study are: First, there have been no commercialized active ankle exoskeletons available in the market. All the available…
Positive biomechanical outcomes have been reported with lower-limb exoskeletons in laboratory settings, but these devices have difficulty delivering appropriate assistance in synchrony with human gait as the task or rate of phase progression change in real-world environments. This paper presents a controller for an ankle exoskeleton that uses a data-driven kinematic model to continuously estimate the phase, phase rate, stride length, and ground incline states during locomotion, which enables the real-time adaptation of torque assistance to match human torques observed in a multi-activity datab…
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition（人类与机器认知研究所）
Exoskeletons are a promising technology that enables individuals with mobility limitations to walk again. As the 2016 Cybathlon illustrated, however, the community has a considerable way to go before exoskeletons have the necessary capabilities to be incorporated into daily life. While most exoskeletons power only hip and knee flexion, Team Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) presents a new exoskeleton, Mina v2, which includes a powered ankle dorsi/plantar flexion. As our entry to the 2016 Cybathlon Powered Exoskeleton Competition, Mina v2's performance allowed us to explore the e…
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northeastern University（东北大学机械工程系）；College of Engineering, Northeastern University（东北大学工程学院）；Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University（东北大学计算机科学学院）；Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Khoury College of Computer Sciences, and the Institute for Experiential Robotics, Northeastern University（计算机科学学院电子与计算机工程系及体验机器人研究所，东北大学）；Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology（沃德夫机械工程学院及机器人与智能机器研究所，佐治亚理工学院）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Science, and the Institute for Experiential Robotics, Northeastern University（机械工程系、物理治疗、运动与康复科学系及体验机器人研究所，东北大学）
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
Recently, the lower limb exoskeletons which providemobility for paraplegic patients to support their daily life havedrawn much attention. However, the pilots are required to applyexcessive force through a pair of crutches to maintain balanceduring walking. This paper proposes a novel gait trajectorygeneration algorithm for exoskeleton locomotion on flat groundand stair which aims to minimize the force applied by the pilotwithout increasing the degree of freedom (DoF) of the system.First, the system is modelled as a five-link mechanism dynam-ically for torque computing. Then, an optimization ap…
Force Myography based Torque Estimation in Human Knee and Ankle Joints
High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab, Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany（高性能人形机器人实验室，人机学与机器人研究所，卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院（KIT））；BioMotion Center, Institute of Sports and Sports Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany（生物运动中心，体育与体育科学研究所，卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院（KIT））
A Novel Hybrid PID-LQR Controller for Sit-To-Stand Assistance Using a CAD-Integrated Simscape Multibody Lower Limb Exoskeleton
Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology（塔帕尔工程技术学院）；Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS)（哈利法大学自主机器人系统中心）；Khalifa University（哈利法大学）
A Comprehensive Dynamic Simulation Framework for Coupled Neuromusculoskeletal-Exoskeletal Systems
Yiwu Research Institute, Fudan University（复旦大学义乌研究院）；School of Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Tongji University（同济大学航空航天与力学学院）；College of Engineering, Peking University（北京大学工学院）
New Jersey Institute of Technology（新泽西理工学院）；Kessler Foundation（凯斯勒基金会）；The City University of New York（纽约城市大学）
A significant challenge for the control of a robotic lower extremity rehabilitation exoskeleton is to ensure stability and robustness during programmed tasks or motions, which is crucial for the safety of the mobility-impaired user. Due to various levels of the user's disability, the human-exoskeleton interaction forces and external perturbations are unpredictable and could vary substantially and cause conventional motion controllers to behave unreliably or the robot to fall down. In this work, we propose a new, reinforcement learning-based, motion controller for a lower extremity rehabilitati…
New Jersey Institute of Technology（新泽西理工学院）；CFD Research Corporation（CFD研究公司）
In this paper, we present an integrated human-in-the-loop simulation paradigm for the design and evaluation of a lower extremity exoskeleton that is elastically strapped onto human lower limbs. The exoskeleton has 3 rotational DOFs on each side and weighs 23kg. Two torque compensation controllers of the exoskeleton are introduced, aiming to minimize interference and maximize assistance to human motions, respectively. Their effects on the wearer's biomechanical loadings are studied with a running motion and predicted ground reaction forces. It is found that the added weight of the passive exosk…
