Shank Shock Absorption Mechanism and Associated Gait Pattern Design for Reduction of Ground Impact of a Powered Exoskeleton

Abstract

Powered exoskeletons for people with complete paraplegia are subject to repetitive large impacts due to the recurrent ground contacts. Those impact forces not only deteriorate the ride comfort but also cause a serious damage to the musculoskeletal system of the human wearing the powered exoskeleton. To address the issue, a mechanism to absorb shock for powered exoskeletons are proposed in this paper. The proposed shock absorption mechanism was integrated into the WalkON Suit, a powered exoskeleton for complete paraplegics. To obtain the desired performance of the proposed mechanism, the gait pattern of the powered exoskeleton was also designed. The mechanism and gait pattern generation algorithm were verified from experiments with a human subject.