Combined Rigid-Flexible Weight-Bearing Exoskeleton

Most of the research on rigid exoskeletons has focused on how to further improve the efficiency of the exoskeleton to further reduce the wearer's energy consumption, neglecting the wearer's experience. In this paper, we introduce a rigid-flexible exoskeleton based on active-passive control strategy. By switching the control strategy of the exoskeleton at different stages of the gait cycle, the suppleness of the exoskeleton's interaction with the wearer is improved. In addition, an experiment involving three testers validated the effectiveness of the presented rigid-flexible weight-bearing exoskeleton. The results of the experiment showed that the exoskeleton was able to reduce the wearer's metabolic expenditure by 13.1% when exercising with a weight of 30kg.