Exo-Leg robot

Exoskeleton Robot for Elderly and Disabled Persons

Högskolan I Gävle - University of Gävle - Sweden

The biomechanics of human walking have been well studied and is known to have more than 30 degrees of freedom (dof). However using such high order models requires considerable computational effort to study the dynamics as well as being very complex; it turns out that such high orders are unnecessary and realistic approximations can be obtained using much lower-order models.

This project consists in develop an exoskeleton robot based in the design of the human-like walking gait of 7 DOF. The bipedal system can be considered as 7 links connected forming the two legs and a torso, the legs each comprise a thigh, shin and foot, with forces applied at the hip, knees, ankles and the torso to derive a walking control strategy. Lagrangian dynamics are often used to model bipeds as this provides a simple method to obtain the dynamical equations.

The project also is carry out a data gathering harness that can be strapped onto a person and will collect real-time hip, knee and ankle joint angles for both legs as well as the torso angle during normal straight walking. An exoskeleton leg has been designed and built using three links to represent the thigh, shin and foot, and three linear actuators are included to drive the hip, knee and ankle joints to perform the walking motions.

Country & Year

Sweden - 2011

Authors

Hernando Leon-Rodriguez
Gurvinder Virk