Cao Wujing, Ma Yue, Chen Chunjie, Zhang Jingmin, Wu Xinyu
IEEE Trans Biomed Circuits Syst. 2022 Jun;16(3):384-394. doi: 10.1109/TBCAS.2022.3173965. Epub 2022 Jul 12.
Soft lower limb exoskeletons (LLEs) are wearable devices that have good potential in walking rehabilitation and augmentation. While a few studies focused on the structure design and assistance force optimization of the soft LLEs, rarely work has been conducted on the hardware circuits design. The main purpose of this work is to present a new soft LLE for walking efficiency improvement and introduce its hardware circuits design. A soft LLE for hip flexion assistance and a hardware circuits system with scalability were proposed. To assess the efficacy of the soft LLE, the experimental tests that evaluate the sensor data acquisition, force tracking performance, lower limb muscle activity and metabolic cost were conducted. The time error in the peak assistance force was just 1%. The reduction in the normalized root-mean-square EMG of the rectus femoris was 7.1%. The net metabolic cost in exoskeleton on condition was reduced by 7.8% relative to walking with no exoskeleton. The results show that the designed hardware circuits can be applied to the soft LLE and the soft LLE is able to improve walking efficiency of wearers.
柔软的下肢外骨骼（LLEs）是一种可穿戴设备，在步行康复和增强方面具有良好的潜力。虽然有一些研究关注柔软LLEs的结构设计和助力优化，但在硬件电路设计方面开展的工作很少。这项工作的主要目的是提出一种用于提高步行效率的新型柔软LLE，并介绍其硬件电路设计。提出了一种用于髋关节屈曲辅助的柔软LLE和一种具有可扩展性的硬件电路系统。为了评估柔软LLE的功效，进行了评估传感器数据采集、力跟踪性能、下肢肌肉活动和代谢成本的实验测试。峰值助力力的时间误差仅为1%。股直肌归一化均方根肌电图的降低率为7.1%。与不穿戴外骨骼行走相比，外骨骼状态下的净代谢成本降低了7.8%。结果表明，所设计的硬件电路可应用于柔软LLE，且柔软LLE能够提高穿戴者的步行效率。
