TY - GEN
T1 - Development of a Soft Inflatable Exosuit for Knee Flexion Assistance
AU - Hasan, Ibrahim Mohammed
AU - Yumbla, Emiliano Quinones
AU - Zhang, Wenlong
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1944833, in part by Arizona Department of Health Services under Grant ADHS18-198863, and in part by the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IEEE.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Wearable robotics has shown to be effective for assisting in activities of daily living and restoring motor functions. The objective of this research is to develop a soft robotic exosuit for knee flexion assistance during normal walking and validate its ability to reduce the efforts of the knee flexor muscles: biceps femoris (BF) and semitendinosus (SM). The exosuit is powered by an inflatable curved fabric actuator with the capability to generate flexion torques at the knee joint. An analytical model to characterize the torque of the proposed actuator is derived and validated experimentally. It is found that the analytical torque model precisely matches the experimental results such that the highest root mean square error (RMSE) obtained is 1.237 Nm while the lowest is 0.188 Nm. In addition, the derived model outperformed a benchmark torque model such that its minimum and maximum RMSEs are approximately 90% and 70% less than the benchmark model respectively. A prototype of the knee exosuit is fabricated and tested on one healthy subject with different operating conditions to assist knee flexion during normal walking. The results show that by choosing the appropriate timing of inflation, the exosuit can reduce the electromyography activity of the BF and the SM by 32% and 23%, respectively, without impeding the knee extensor muscle or reducing the knee's range of motion.
AB - Wearable robotics has shown to be effective for assisting in activities of daily living and restoring motor functions. The objective of this research is to develop a soft robotic exosuit for knee flexion assistance during normal walking and validate its ability to reduce the efforts of the knee flexor muscles: biceps femoris (BF) and semitendinosus (SM). The exosuit is powered by an inflatable curved fabric actuator with the capability to generate flexion torques at the knee joint. An analytical model to characterize the torque of the proposed actuator is derived and validated experimentally. It is found that the analytical torque model precisely matches the experimental results such that the highest root mean square error (RMSE) obtained is 1.237 Nm while the lowest is 0.188 Nm. In addition, the derived model outperformed a benchmark torque model such that its minimum and maximum RMSEs are approximately 90% and 70% less than the benchmark model respectively. A prototype of the knee exosuit is fabricated and tested on one healthy subject with different operating conditions to assist knee flexion during normal walking. The results show that by choosing the appropriate timing of inflation, the exosuit can reduce the electromyography activity of the BF and the SM by 32% and 23%, respectively, without impeding the knee extensor muscle or reducing the knee's range of motion.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141872814&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85141872814&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/BioRob52689.2022.9925474
DO - 10.1109/BioRob52689.2022.9925474
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85141872814
T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics
BT - BioRob 2022 - 9th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 9th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob 2022
Y2 - 21 August 2022 through 24 August 2022
ER -