Abstract
Spinal cord injuries or stroke can lead to physical disabilities in individuals. As a solution, assistive devices have been developed and studied to help these individuals regain mobility and the strength to move their limbs. Developing these devices to be cost-effective, lightweight, and comfortable would make them more practical for home-based usage with a significant impact on people's lives. In this work, a new hip mechatronic exoskeleton is designed and controlled to reduce weight and cost, maximize assistive torque and user comfort. This will ensure that the exoskeleton will remain affordable with high strength and torque rendering capabilities. Light and printable materials were utilized in the exoskeleton's structure to make it reproducible and more affordable for a large population of end users. In order to achieve portability for the exoskeleton, a careful choice was made to employ a mechatronic configuration, which included high-torque DC motors, a mini-PC, a microcontroller, a rechargeable battery, and intermediate boards. Experimental studies have been conducted to assess the exoskeleton's performance during walking and sit-to-stand movements for hip joints at low and high speeds. The results of employing this exoskeleton by an able-bodied user showed that the maximum tracking error was less than 0.09 rad with up to 25 Nm assistive torque by adjusting the controller gains.
