The study of impedance control of lower extremity exoskeleton

An assistive exoskeleton was studied for people with lower limb motor dysfunction in this paper. Firstly, the design of the lower extremity exoskeleton was presented. The electrical motors were all remotely located on the back of the exoskeleton. Cable driven mechanisms were used to transmit the flexion/extension of the hip and knee joints. One passive DOF was located at the hip for adduction/abduction, and two passive DOFs were located at the ankle for the adduction/abduction and dorsiflexion/plantar flexion. Then, an impedance control algorithm based on robust adaptive compensation was proposed, and the virtual prototype simulation was carried out based on ADAMS and SIMULINK co-simulation. Finally, the control method was applied in hip exoskeleton leg, the results showed that the exoskeleton can assist the wear’s motion by providing torques at the hip joint, the control algorithm can track the target trajectory well and confirm the feasibility of the system design.