A Novel Portable Lower Limb Exoskeleton for Gravity Compensation during Walking
Authors: Libo Zhou, Weihai Chen, Wenjie Chen, Shaoping Bai, Jianhua Wang
Abstract
This paper presents a novel portable passive lower limb exoskeleton for walking assistance. The exoskeleton is designed with built-in spring mechanisms at the hip and knee joints to realize gravity balancing of the human leg. A pair of mating gears is used to convert the tension force from the built-in springs into balancing torques at hip and knee joints for overcoming the influence of gravity. Such a design makes the exoskeleton has a compact layout with small protrusion, which improves its safety and user acceptance. In this paper, the design principle of gravity balancing is described. Simulation results show a significant reduction of driving torques at the limb joints. A prototype of single leg exoskeleton has been constructed and preliminary test results show the effectiveness of the exoskeleton.