Hardware Circuits Design and Performance Evaluation of a Soft Lower Limb Exoskeleton
Hardware Circuits Design and Performance Evaluation of a Soft Lower Limb Exoskeleton
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DOI：
10.1109/tbcas.2022.3173965
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发表时间：
2022-06-01
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Wu, Xinyu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cao, Wujing;Ma, Yue;Wu, Xinyu
软下肢外骨骼（LLE）是一种可穿戴设备，在步行康复和增强方面具有良好的潜力。目前对柔性直线电机的结构设计和助力优化的研究较少，而对硬件电路设计的研究较少。本文的主要目的是提出一种新的用于提高步行效率的软LLE，并介绍其硬件电路设计。提出了一种用于辅助髋关节屈曲的软LLE和一种具有可扩展性的硬件电路系统。为了评估软LLE的有效性，进行了评估传感器数据采集、力跟踪性能、下肢肌肉活动和代谢成本的实验测试。峰值辅助力的时间误差只有1%。股直肌的标准化均方根EMG降低7.1%。相对于没有外骨骼的行走，条件下外骨骼的净代谢成本降低了7.8%。结果表明，所设计的硬件电路可应用于软LLE，软LLE能够提高穿戴者的行走效率。
Soft lower limb exoskeletons (LLEs) are wearable devices that have good potential in walking rehabilitation and augmentation. While a few studies focused on the structure design and assistance force optimization of the soft LLEs, rarely work has been conducted on the hardware circuits design. The main purpose of this work is to present a new soft LLE for walking efficiency improvement and introduce its hardware circuits design. A soft LLE for hip flexion assistance and a hardware circuits system with scalability were proposed. To assess the efficacy of the soft LLE, the experimental tests that evaluate the sensor data acquisition, force tracking performance, lower limb muscle activity and metabolic cost were conducted. The time error in the peak assistance force was just 1%. The reduction in the normalized root-mean-square EMG of the rectus femoris was 7.1%. The net metabolic cost in exoskeleton on condition was reduced by 7.8% relative to walking with no exoskeleton. The results show that the designed hardware circuits can be applied to the soft LLE and the soft LLE is able to improve walking efficiency of wearers.