Human–machine force interaction design and control for the HIT load-carrying exoskeleton

Abstract

The HIT load-carrying exoskeleton is designed for enhancing the operator's load-carrying capability. Human walking has the characteristics of diversity and randomness. It requires that the sensing system of exoskeleton could detect and identify the random motion of human body. In this article, a human-machine force interaction designing architecture is proposed for HIT load-carrying exoskeleton. The human-machine interactive forces at the kinematic terminals (the back and feet) are detected for the human movement identification. Four basic body modalities during the movement process are proposed, which could be automatically identified by the sensing system. The kinematic models for the swing leg and supporting leg are established, respectively. A positional deviation feedback control method based on the interaction force detection is designed. The experiments show that the human-machine interaction force detection at the back and feet and the identification of different body modalities and movement intention are feasible. The interactive forces on the back are far less than the payload, indicating that the exoskeleton has good power-assisted effect.

Influence of Power Delivery Timing on the Energetics and Biomechanics of Humans Wearing a Hip Exoskeleton

“…Research groups have used both rigid exoskeletons (Ruiz Garate et al, 2016 ), as we use in our experiment, and soft exoskeletons to test the effect of different hip assistance strategies on metabolic output (Ding et al, 2016a ; Panizzolo et al, 2016 ). A wide variety of control systems have been proposed (Aguirre-Ollinger, 2013 ; Jang et al, 2015 ; Koller et al, 2015 ; Oh et al, 2015 ; Takahashi et al, 2015 ; Wu et al, 2015 ; Yan et al, 2015 ; Ao et al, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2016 ; Ding et al, 2016b ; Zhang et al, 2016 ), but typically tests are done on a unique device with only one controller. Oscillator-based controllers tend to be popular for hip exoskeletons due to the reliance on only hip joint angle sensing for control (Ronsse et al, 2011 ; Giovacchini et al, 2014 ; Seo et al, 2016 ; Yan et al, 2016 ; Sugar et al, 2017 ).…”

Importance and Applications of Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) in Railway Maintenance Sector: A Review

“…Therefore, it would be advantageous if more research were conducted on applied robotics to elevate the mechanical engineering aspect of such systems. For instance, introduce collaborative robots to support maintenance technicians in railway depots [82], develop a robotic system to conduct scheduled maintenance tasks, such as front end inspection and service of rolling-stocks or to service rolling-stock brake system, equip railway workers who handle heavy tasks with load carrying exoskeletons to minimize muscular fatigues [83], or adopt humanoid robots from service robotic sector to handle complex railway maintenance tasks [77,84,85].…”

Fuzzy cerebellar model articulation controller-based adaptive tracking control for load-carrying exoskeleton

“…The interaction force F int is detected by a multidimensional force sensor, which is usually mounted on the back between human and machine. 25…”