Flexible Gait Enhancing Mechatronics System for Lower Limb Assistance (GEMS L-Type)

This paper presents a novel wearable walking assistance device for the elderly, designed to aid them in their physical gait. In compliance with human motion and the human body, the device not only fits tightly to the lower body of a wearer, but also transmits the assisting torque to the hip/knee joint efficiently and comfortably. To overcome the poor wearability and assistive performance of conventional wearable walking assistance devices, three novel mechanisms are proposed: first, a dual reduction actuator, which makes the mechanism more compact with minimal resistance, second, compliant joints, which adapt to human motion regardless of the wearing state, wearing position, and three-dimensional human joint motions, and third, a flexible foot/ankle mechanism, which helps in rigidly transmitting the assisting force only to the forefoot. The developed wearable walking assistance device based on these mechanisms was validated through experiments.