Abstract
To better study how the ankle exoskeleton reduces the meta-bolic consumption of human body during walking, a simple biomechanical model is built to study the effect of ankle exoskeleton on the metabolism of plantar flexor muscle. Two types of exoskeleton assistive torque are brought into the model simulation, one is the proportional assistive torque, and the other is the optimal torque generated from the biomechanical model by a genetic algorithm. Compared with the former, the optimal torque has two counter-intuitive features: the amplitude peak delays and its amplitude during the main gait phase is less than that of the proportional torque. In further research, it is found that their internal mechanism is better to adapt to the changes in muscle efficiency caused by changes in muscle length and speed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Cornwall, W.: In pursuit of the perfect power suit. Science 350(6258), 270–273 (2015)
Lee, S., et al.: Autonomous multi-joint soft exosuit for assistance with walking overground. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 2812–2819. IEEE (2018)
Wehner, M., et al.: A lightweight soft exosuit for gait assistance. In: 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3362–3369. IEEE (2013)
Collins, S.H., Wiggin, M.B., Sawicki, G.S.: Reducing the energy cost of human walking using an unpowered exoskeleton. Nature 522(7555), 212 (2015)
Asbeck, A.T., Dyer, R.J., Larusson, A.F., Walsh, C.J.: Biologically-inspired soft exosuit. In: 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), pp. 1–8. IEEE (2013)
Mooney, L.M., Rouse, E.J., Herr, H.M.: Autonomous exoskeleton reduces metabolic cost of human walking during load carriage. J. Neuroeng. Rehabil. 11(1), 80 (2014)
Lee, S., Crea, S., Malcolm, P., Galiana, I., Asbeck, A., Walsh, C.: Controlling negative and positive power at the ankle with a soft exosuit. In: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 3509–3515. IEEE (2016)
Quinlivan, B., Lee, S., Malcolm, P., Rossi, D., Grimmer, M., Siviy, C., Karavas, N., Wagner, D., Asbeck, A., Galiana, I., et al.: Assistance magnitude versus metabolic cost reductions for a tethered multiarticular soft exosuit. Sci. Robot. 2(2), 1–10 (2017)
Zhang, J., Fiers, P., Witte, K.A., Jackson, R.W., Poggensee, K.L., Atkeson, C.G., Collins, S.H.: Human-in-the-loop optimization of exoskeleton assistance during walking. Science 356(6344), 1280–1284 (2017)
Kuo, A.D.: Energetics of actively powered locomotion using the simplest walking model. J. Biomech. Eng. 124(1), 113–120 (2002)
Zelik, K.E., Huang, T.W.P., Adamczyk, P.G., Kuo, A.D.: The role of series ankle elasticity in bipedal walking. J. Theor. Biol. 346, 75–85 (2014)
Zajac, F.E.: Muscle and tendon: properties, models, scaling, and application to biomechanics and motor control. Crit. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 17(4), 359–411 (1989)
Sawicki, G.S., Khan, N.S.: A simple model to estimate plantarflexor muscle-tendon mechanics and energetics during walking with elastic ankle exoskeletons. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 63(5), 914–923 (2016)
Minetti, A., Alexander, R.M.: A theory of metabolic costs for bipedal gaits. J. Theor. Biol. 186(4), 467–476 (1997)
Wang, N., Zhong, Y., Zhang, X.: An improved model to estimate muscle-tendon mechanics and energetics during walking with a passive ankle exoskeleton. In: Yu, H., Liu, J., Liu, L., Ju, Z., Liu, Y., Zhou, D. (eds.) ICIRA 2019. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 11740, pp. 83–96. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27526-6_8
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the reviewers’ comments. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U1713207), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2017A010102005), Key Program of Guangzhou Technology Plan (Grant No. 201904020020).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wang, N., Li, Z., Zhong, Y., Zhang, X. (2021). Assistive Torque of Ankle Exoskeleton Based on a Simple Biomechanical Model and a Genetic Algorithm. 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_74
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89095-7_74
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-89094-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-89095-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)