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Development of knee exoskeleton for capturing energy from human knee motion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2023

Bing Chen ,
Jialiang Tan ,
Chenpu Shi  and
Bin Zi Open the ORCID record for Bin Zi [Opens in a new window]
Bing Chen
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China Intelligent Interconnected Systems Laboratory of Anhui Province, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
Jialiang Tan
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
Chenpu Shi
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
Bin Zi*
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China Intelligent Interconnected Systems Laboratory of Anhui Province, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
*
Corresponding author: Bin Zi; E-mail: zibinhfut@163.com
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Abstract

In this paper, the design and experimental validation of a knee exoskeleton are presented. The exoskeleton can capture the negative work from the wearer’s knee motion while decreasing the muscle activities of the wearer. First, the human knee biomechanics during the normal walking is described. Then, the design of the exoskeleton is presented. The exoskeleton mainly includes a left one-way transmission mechanism, a right one-way transmission mechanism, and a front transmission mechanism. The left and right one-way transmission mechanisms are designed to capture the negative work from the wearer’s knee motion in the stance and swing phases, respectively. The front transmission mechanism is designed to transform the bidirectional rotation of the wearer’s knee joint into the generator unidirectional rotation. Additionally, the modeling and analysis of the energy harvesting of the exoskeleton is described. Finally, walking experiments are performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed knee exoskeleton. The testing results verify that the developed knee exoskeleton can output a maximum power of 5.68 ± 0.23 W and an average power of 1.45 ± 0.13 W at a speed of 4.5 km/h in a gait cycle. The average rectus femoris and semitendinosus activities of the wearers in a gait cycle are decreased by 3.68% and 3.40%, respectively.

Keywords

wearable exoskeletonmechanism designenergy recyclinghuman walkingnegative work
Type
Research Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 41 , Issue 10 , October 2023 , pp. 3195 - 3210
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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