Modeling and Simulation of Lower Limbs Exoskeleton for Children with Locomotion Difficulties

Abstract

Exoskeletons are promising technologies in rehabilitation medicine, since they help debilitated patients to improve their motor skills, thus increasing the quality of life of these individuals. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to demonstrate the initial processes of making an adjustable and personalized lower limb exoskeleton for children, based on the understanding of the neuromusculoskeletal system and characteristics of human gait. In addition, the study of this robotic orthosis involves investigating its applications, performance systems, structural components, advantages, and disadvantages. As part of the initial processes, a programming test was performed in open-source software named Tinkercad, to control the hardware and gait timing, followed by the simulation of the actuation system to obtain an exoskeleton as functional as possible. Simultaneously, the device's structure was modeled on Autodesk Inventor software, which will allow a stress analysis. Once these steps are finished, the final assembly and tests are carried out, which will consist of an adjustable exoskeleton with two Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in each lower limb.