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A Performance Evaluating Platform for Variable Stiffness Exoskeleton Joint

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Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13013))

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Abstract

This paper presents a torque testing platform for variable stiffness evaluation of knee joint exoskeleton, a testing platform was designed based on the body size of a normal adult. It includes mechanical structure, control system and data acquisition. The mechanical structure is mainly composed of a stepper motor, a guide screw, a displacement sensor, a force sensor as well as thigh and calf models. A controller and Data Acquisition Board (firmware NI USB-6009) were used to control stepper motor and collect data. According to the equation of static equilibrium, a mechanical model of the platform was built to calculate disturbance torque and angle of exoskeleton joints. The joint angle measurement range of the platform is from 42° to 180° and the maximum tested torque value is 40 Nm. Finally, a test about tension spring was conducted illustrating that variable stiffness performance of joints can be evaluated by this device.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by National Key R&D Program of China under Grant No. 2019YFB1311501, in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51905374 & 61773280.

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Correspondence to Jianbin Liu .

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Ma, Z., Chen, B., Liu, J., Zuo, S. (2021). A Performance Evaluating Platform for Variable Stiffness Exoskeleton Joint. In: Liu, XJ., Nie, Z., Yu, J., Xie, F., Song, R. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13013. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89095-7_67

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89095-7_67

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-89094-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-89095-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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