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  4. Personal Mobility with Synchronous Trunk-Knee Passive Exoskeleton: Optimizing Human-Robot Energy Transfer
 
research article

Personal Mobility with Synchronous Trunk-Knee Passive Exoskeleton: Optimizing Human-Robot Energy Transfer

Paez Granados, Diego Felipe  
•
Kadone, Hideki
•
Hassan, Modar
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January 7, 2022
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics

We present a personal mobility device for lower- body impaired users through a light-weighted exoskeleton on wheels. On its core, a novel passive exoskeleton provides postural transition leveraging natural body postures with support to the trunk on sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit (STS) transitions by a single gas spring as an energy storage unit. We propose a direction-dependent coupling of knees and hip joints through a double-pulley wire system, transferring energy from the torso motion towards balancing the moment load at the knee joint actuator. Herewith, the exoskeleton maximizes energy transfer and the naturalness of the user’s movement. We introduce an embodied user interface for hands-free navigation through a torso pressure sensing with minimal trunk rotations, resulting on average 19◦ ± 13◦ on six unimpaired users. We evaluated the design for STS assistance on 11 unimpaired users observing motions and muscle activity during the transitions. Results comparing assisted and unassisted STS transitions validated a significant reduction (up to 68% p < 0.01) at the involved muscle groups. Moreover, we showed it feasible through natural torso leaning movements of +12◦ ± 6.5◦ and −13.7◦ ± 6.1◦ for standing and sitting, respectively. Passive postural transition assistance warrants further work on increasing its applicability and broadening the user population.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1109/TMECH.2021.3135453
ArXiv ID

2201.03374

Author(s)
Paez Granados, Diego Felipe  
Kadone, Hideki
Hassan, Modar
Chen, Yang
Suzuki, Kenji
Date Issued

2022-01-07

Published in
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
Start page

1

End page

11

Subjects

Passive exoskeleton

•

Human-Robot Interaction

•

Standing Mobility Vehicle

•

Design Optimization

URL

Graphical Abstract

https://youtu.be/mHam29a3rFw
Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

OTHER

EPFL units
LASA  
Available on Infoscience
March 2, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/185982
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