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Towards Variable Assistance for Lower Body Exoskeletons | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Towards Variable Assistance for Lower Body Exoskeletons


Abstract:

This letter presents and experimentally demonstrates a novel framework for variable assistance on lower body exoskeletons, based upon safety-critical control methods. Exi...Show More

Abstract:

This letter presents and experimentally demonstrates a novel framework for variable assistance on lower body exoskeletons, based upon safety-critical control methods. Existing work has shown that providing some freedom of movement around a nominal gait, instead of rigidly following it, accelerates the spinal learning process of people with a walking impediment when using a lower body exoskeleton. With this as motivation, we present a method to accurately control how much a subject is allowed to deviate from a given gait while ensuring robustness to patient perturbation. This method leverages control barrier functions to force certain joints to remain inside predefined trajectory tubes in a minimally invasive way. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated experimentally with able-bodied subjects and the Atalante lower body exoskeleton.
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters ( Volume: 5, Issue: 1, January 2020)
Page(s): 266 - 273
Date of Publication: 26 November 2019

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