Design of Mechanism and Control System for a Lightweight Lower Limb Exoskeleton

Abstract

Neurological diseases such as stroke and spinal cord injury can lead to lower limb movement disorders, and gait training is an important means for rehabilitation of lower limb dysfunction. The lower limb exoskeleton robot is a new technique of rehabilitation training for lower limb dysfunction, but lower limb exoskeletons are very heavy and are not easy to wear nowadays. To reduce weight, only the hip joint of the lower limb exoskeleton designed in this paper is driven by motor, and both knee and ankle joint are unpowered joints. Based on the principle of torsion spring clutch, the knee joint can reliably switch the swing phase to the standing phase. This paper also introduces the control system framework of the lower limb exoskeleton and the control method based on finite state machine. Finally, experiments on gait recognition based on foot pressure are carried out.