An exoskeleton worn by a human user consisting of a rigid pelvic harness worn about the waist of the user and exoskeleton leg structures each of which extends downwardly alongside one of the human user’s legs. The leg structures include hip, knee and ankle joints connected by adjustable length thigh and shin members. The hip joint that attaches the thigh structure to the pelvic harness includes a passive spring or an active actuator to assist in lifting the exoskeleton and said human user with respect to the ground surface upon which the user is walking and to propel the exoskeleton and human user forward. A controllable damper operatively arresting the movement of the knee joint at controllable times during the walking cycle, and spring located at the ankle and foot member stores and releases energy during walking.

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Gravity balancing is often used in industrial machines to decrease the required actuator efforts during motion. In this paper, we present a new design for gravity balancing of the human leg using an external orthosis. This external orthosis is connected to the human leg on the shank and its other end is fixed to a walking frame. The major issues addressed in this paper are: (i) design for gravity balancing of the human leg and the orthosis, (ii) kinematic compatibility of the human leg and the external orthosis during walking, (iii) comparison of the joint torque trajectories of the human leg with and without external orthosis, and (iv) effects of variation of the link lengths and masses of the human leg on the inertia of the external orthosis. We illustrate feasible 2D and 3D designs of the external orthosis through computer simulations. Fabrication of this design will be the subject of future work.

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This paper describes a powered leg orthosis for gait rehabilitation of patients with walking disabilities. The paper proposes controllers which can apply suitable forces on the leg so that it moves on a desired trajectory. The description of the controllers, simulations and experimental results with the powered orthosis are presented in the paper. Currently, experiments have been performed with a dummy leg in the orthosis. In the coming months, this powered orthosis will be used on healthy subjects and stroke patients.

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In this paper, we present a passive device for swing assistance of motor-incomplete spinal cord injury patients. This device is aimed at reducing the physical demands on the therapists during treadmill training. We model the human leg as two links and a point foot mass, with a moving trunk. We employ passive elements in the design which get charged by the treadmill. Using the system dynamics, we optimize the design parameters to obtain a feasible swing motion of the leg. An exoskeleton was constructed based on these design parameters and tests were performed on a healthy subject at different treadmill speeds.

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This paper presents a body model of intermediate level of detail to allow prediction of the knee torque produced by thigh muscles based on EMG signals. This torque prediction is used as input for a torque controller that adapts the level of support offered to an operator by a powered leg orthosis. The level of detail of the body model is chosen in such a way, that all parameters of the model can be calibrated for a specific operator with only a few sensors that are mounted on the exoskeleton.

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