一种踝关节柔性助力外骨骼系统设计

Design of an Ankle-assisted Soft Exosuit System

柔性外骨骼具有良好的人机交互性能,因此在行军助力、康复助老、智能助残等方面具有广阔的应用前景。在人体行走过程中,踝关节做功最多、承载最大,因此设计了一款踝关节柔性助力外骨骼系统达到减缓小腿肌肉疲劳的目的。首先,通过Vicon动作捕捉实验采集人体行走过程中的关节角度信息和足底压力数据,利用生物力学分析软件Opensim分析踝关节的运动特性;然后,基于踝关节的运动特性设计了足底压力识别、电机驱动、绳索传动的柔性外骨骼,辅助踝关节跖曲;最后,通过小腿肌群的肌电信号,评估外骨骼的助力效果。实验结果显示在外骨骼的辅助下,腓骨前肌、内侧腓肠肌、比目鱼肌的肌电信号均方根值分别降低了7.2%、13.4%和8.9%,即该外骨骼能够有效减小小腿肌肉疲劳。

The soft exosuit has a promising wide range of potential applications in marching,rehabilitation helpage and intelligent assistive for the good human-machine interaction property.The ankle’s contributions to limb positive power is most and it bears the most moment during walking normally,so it is necessary to design an ankle soft exosuit to reduce muscle fatigue.Firstly,a series of experiments were conducted to collect the data of joint angle and foot pressure,analyzing the biomechanical characteristic of ankle by the software of Opensim.Then,based on the results,an ankle soft exosuit recognized by foot pressure,driven by motor and transmitted by rope was developed to assist ankle plantarflexion.Finally,the effect of exosuit was evaluated through measuring electromyography-based metrics of lower leg muscles.The result show that the root mean square of tibialis anterior,medial gastrocnemius,and medial soleus reduce by 7.2%,13.4%and 8.9%with the assisted of exosuit,which demonstrated that the exosuit reduce the muscle fatigue of lower limb effectively.