Development of Smart Wearable Exoskeleton Robot

Wearable lower extremity exoskeletons are assistive tools developed for the purposes of labor-saving in effort, lowering bone joint loads and reducing wear and wear on joints during walk or rehabilitation exercises. There are two applications, with one being for medical rehabilitation so patients who need motion exercises can avoid the waiting time in hospitals and also reduce the manpower strain of physical therapists. The other application is in autonomous walking control in which the electromyography (EMG) of human body is used to control activation and shutdown of assistive tools. These two applications both use embedded systems as a control center and gsensors for gesture recognition to control the balance of exoskeletons. Motion detection by EMG allows computer systems to learn the information on how patients would like to control the exoskeletons. The autonomous walking mode uses zero moment point and ANFIS to stabilize the body from tilting during walking motion. D-H method is used to define the robotic linkage coordinates, followed by the use of homogeneous matrices to derive forward kinematics. Algebra and geometry are then used for inverse kinematics, with PID control making the motions smoother.