Assistive Mobility Control of a Robotic Hip-Knee Exoskeleton for Gait Training

• Main Authors: Chen, C.-T (Author), Chuan, C.-C (Author), Li, Y.-R (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2022
• Subjects: Assistive mobilities; Exoskeleton (Robotics); Extended state observer; FFTSMC; Flexion-extension; Freezing; freezing of gait; Freezing of gaits; gait; Gait; Gait training; Joints (anatomy); Lower limb; Mobility control; Patient rehabilitation; Physiological models; rehabilitation; robotic exoskeleton; Robotic exoskeletons
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 In this paper, we present an assistive mobility control for a robotic hip-knee exoskeleton in-tended for gait training. The robotic hip-knee exoskeleton is designed with an active flexion/extension and a passive abduction/adduction at each hip joint and an active flexion/extension at each knee joint to comply with the movement of lower limbs. While facilitating walking with the robotic exoskeleton, model-free linear extended state observer (LESO)-based controllers are proposed for gait control, in which the LESO is used to deal with each user’s different lower limb parameters and unknown exerted torques. Walking and ascending experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods, and the results are shown with respect to walking parameters. Moreover, a preliminary study for an extended application to the recovery of normal gaits that relieves the freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients is also investigated in the paper. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.