Development of a Knee Exoskeleton with Gear-Linkage Adaptive Mechanism

齒輪－連桿自適應機構的膝關節外骨骼開發

葉士豪(Shih-Hao Yeh) ； 康志豪(Zhi-Hao Kang) ； 丁相元(Hsiang-Yuan Ting) ； 黃漢邦(Han-Pang Huang)

《中國機械工程學刊》 40卷6期 (2019/12) Pp. 635-645

摘要

In this paper, we design a novel knee exoskeleton - Gear Linkage Adaptive Knee Joint (GLAKJ), with ergonomic characteristics, i.e., self-rotation and rolling-sliding of the knee joint, which are derived from the bones and the ligaments of the knee joint model, and it is hard to design simultaneously in a simple mechanism. To overcome the difficulties, we construct the GLAKJ which combines the two output motions into a single input mechanism. This ergonomic design can reduce the discomfort causing by the inconsistency between the knee joint and the exoskeleton. On the other hand, we use a vision-based system to measure the knee joint data for parameters identification. The vision-based method requires only a low-cost device to customize the GLAKJ for patients. In the experiments, the measured knee joint data of three subjects are validated and implemented on the proposed exoskeleton, and the results have similar motion like the human knee joint.

關鍵字

Knee exoskeleton ； Ergonomics ； Vision-based parameter identification

並列摘要

在本文中，我們設計了一個新穎的膝蓋外骨骼－齒輪連桿適應性膝關節。這個外骨骼具有人體工學的特性:膝關節的自轉以及滾動－滑動，這些特性由膝關節的骨骼與韌帶所產生，且難以同時實現在一個簡單的機構中。為了克服這些難題，我們所設計的外骨骼（GLAKJ）具備單輸入－雙輸出的機構來滿足人體工學的需求，這樣的設計可減少膝關節與外骨骼的運動不一致所產生的不適感。另一方面，我們利用影像基底系統來擷取膝關節的資料進行系統識別，此方法僅需要低成本的裝置即可為病人客製化GLAKJ。在實驗中，三個受測者的膝關節數據被用來驗證並實現外骨骼機構，實驗的結果顯示，我們所設計的GLAKJ可近似於人的膝關節運動。