8 accepted papers
This paper presents an adjustable knee joint for a wearable robot for the elderly, to provide physical gait assistance. In order to compensate for the translational and rotational movements of the knee in the sagittal plane as well as aligning the frontal plane, the proposed knee joint is implemente…
We developed a robotic lower-limb exoskeleton for those who have weakened muscle due to aging and experience difficulty in walking or getting up without help. The exoskeleton covering both limbs from the feet to the waist has 6 electric actuators in the hip abduction/adduction, hip extension/flexion…
This paper presents an adjustable knee mechanism for walking assistance devices for the elderly to provide physical gait assistance. The adjustable knee mechanism can assist in flexion/extension motions of the knee joint and compensate for the transitional movements of the knee in the sagittal plane…
We propose a novel two-tier gait recognizer using a minimal number of mechanical sensors built into a lower limb exoskeleton. The aim of this recognizer is to offer one-step selection of one of the actions ascending, descending, and level walking during five gaits (stair ascent/descent, slope ascent…
In this paper, we propose a novel assistance strategy for stair ascent walking using our robotic hip exoskeleton. Our strategy exploits foot contact event estimated by an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and can detect user intention as well as reflect user preference. In our strategy, a gait cycle i…
This paper presents a simulation framework for pathological gait assistance with a hip exoskeleton. Previously we had developed an event-driven controller for gait assistance [1]. We now simulate (or optimize) the gait assistance in ankle pathologies (e.g., weak dorsiflexion or plantarflexion). It i…
This paper presents a control method for walking assist with hip-mounted exoskeleton robots. For modeling a user's current walking motion, a novel finite state machine is first constructed. We divide a walking cycle uniformly using the inevitable zero crossing events. When state transitions occur, w…
In this paper, we propose a novel online gait task recognition algorithm for hip exoskeleton. The proposed algorithm provides an automatic and prompt recognition result in just one step based on the relations between both hip joint angles at the moment of foot contact. Gait task recognition is one o…