Design and analysis of a lower extremity exoskeleton with the humanoid knee joint

Abstract

Exoskeletons should have certain capabilities and characteristics such as human performance enhancement, low impedance and comfortable. In this paper we present a lower extremity exoskeleton. In order to achieve the characteristics of exoskeletons mentioned above we choose the Series Elastic Actuator (SEA) as its driver. A novel humanoid knee joint is introduced into the exoskeleton to improve the coordination between exoskeleton and human body during work progress. A stable control method is proposed to achieve the exoskeleton joint following motion. Finally, the feasibility of control algorithm is verified by simulation.