Design Of Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robot

Tan, Chee Jun (2015) Design Of Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robot. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

Text Design Of Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robot 24 Pages.pdf Download (358kB)

Abstract

Every year, many workers suffer from work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) cases that are caused by long term walking and standing. This problem can be overcome by using exoskeleton which is a type of wearable robots that can augment the performance of an able-bodied user. A lower limb exoskeleton can be used to improve muscle endurance of the user by providing support torque to the limbs. There are many studies that use hydraulic actuator to actuate the lower limb exoskeleton which have several drawbacks like dirty, noisy and high power consumption. Therefore, electrical actuators that are clean, silent and less power consuming are used in designing the lower limb exoskeleton in this project. Hence, to design an electrical actuated exoskeleton, this project is aimed to derive the mathematical model and joint torque equations, to design a lower limb exoskeleton using electrical motors from the market and to validate the design of the lower limb exoskeleton by simulation. In order to achieve the objectives, mathematical model of the exoskeleton are derived using kinematic analysis and the required joint torque are derived using force analysis. Besides that, motors and gearboxes are selected and incorporated into the design of the exoskeleton. After that, finite element analysis (FEA) and motion analysis test on the design model of the exoskeleton are conducted using SolidWorks. The FEA test shows that the structural strengths of all the exoskeleton links are able to support the user under maximum torque condition. Besides that, the motion analysis done also shows that the actuator units selected are able to support a 100kg user and the exoskeleton to walk. However, there are limitations for the actuator units selected which requires further testing and improvement. In conclusion, all the objectives are achieved but the exoskeleton still requires further studies and improvements.

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