The Knee Joint Design and Control of Above-knee Intelligent Bionic Leg Based on Magneto-rheological Damper

The above-knee intelligent bionic leg is very helpful to amputees in the area of rehabilitation medicine. This paper first introduces the functional demand of the above-knee prosthesis design. Then, the advantages of the four-bar link mechanism and the magneto-rheological （MR） damper are analyzed in detail. The fixed position of the MR damper is optimized and a virtual prototype of knee joint is given. In the end, the system model of kinematics, dynamics, and controller are given and a control experiment is performed. The control experiment indicates that the intelligent bionic leg with multi-axis knee is able to realize gait tracking of the amputee＇s healthy leg based on semi-active control of the MR damper.

A Deep Neural Network Model for Upper Limb Swing Pattern to Control an Active Bionic Leg

Leg amputations are common in accidents and diseases.The present active bionic legs use Electromyography(EMG)signals in lower limbs(just before the location of the amputation)to generate active control signals.The active control with EMGs greatly limits the potential of using these bionic legs because most accidents and diseases cause severe damages to tissues/muscles which originates EMG signals.As an alternative,the present research attempted to use an upper limb swing pattern to control an active bionic leg.A deep neural network(DNN)model is implemented to recognize the patterns in upper limb swing,and it is used to translate these signals into active control input of a bionic leg.The proposed approach can generate a full gait cycle within 1082 milliseconds,and it is comparable to the normal(a person without any disability)1070 milliseconds gait cycle.

Joint position control of bionic jumping leg driven by pneumatic artificial muscle

The bionic legs are generally driven by motors which have the disadvantages of large size and heavy weight.In contrast,the bionic legs driven by pneumatic artificial muscles(PAMs)have the advantages of light weight,good bionics and flexibility.A kind of bionic leg driven by PAMs is designed.The proportional-integral-derivative(PID)algorithm and radial basis function neural network(RBFNN)algorithm are combined to design RBFNN-PID controller,and a low-pass filter is added to the control system,which can effectively improve the jitter phenomenon of the joint during the experiment.It is verified by simulation that the RBFNN-PID algorithm is better than traditional PID algorithm,the response time of joint is improved from 0.15 s to 0.07 s,and the precision of joint position control is improved from 0.75°to 0.001°.The experimental results show that the amplitude of the change in error is reduced from 0.5°to 0.2°.It is verified by jumping experiment that the mechanism can realize jumping action under control,and can achieve the horizontal displacement of 500 mm and the vertical displacement of 250 mm.

Bionic Design and Simulation Analysis of Energy⁃Efficient and Vibration⁃Damping Walking Mechanism

African ostrich can run for 30 min at a speed of 60 km/h in the desert,and its hindlimb has excellent energy saving and vibration damping performance.In order to realize the energy⁃efficient and vibration⁃damping design of the leg mechanism of the legged robot,the principle of engineering bionics was applied.According to the passive rebound characteristic of the intertarsal joint of the ostrich foot and the characteristic of variable output stiffness of the ostrich hindlimb,combined with the proportion and size of the structure of the ostrich hindlimb,the bionic rigid⁃flexible composite legged robot single⁃leg structure was designed.The locomotion of the bionic mechanical leg was simulated by means of ADAMS.Through the motion simulation analysis,the influence of the change of the inner spring stiffness coefficient within a certain range on the vertical acceleration of the body centroid and the motor power consumption was studied,and the optimal stiffness coefficient of the inner spring was obtained to be 200 N/mm,and it was further verified that the inner and outer spring mechanism could effectively reduce the energy consumption of the mechanical leg.Simulation results show that the inner and outer spring mechanism could effectively reduce the motor energy consumption by about 72.49%.

Innovative Design and Performance Evaluation of a High-speed Bionic Mechanical Leg

For most legged robots the drive-motors are mounted on the joints of legs, which increase leg＇s mass and rotary inertia. When mounted on legs, the drive-motor has to rotate clockwise and anticlockwise periodically to swing a leg back and forth. Larger inertia of the leg, as well as the ever-changing status of frequent acceleration and deceleration of the motors, limits the moving speed of the legged robots. This article proposes an improved mechanical design to overcome such problems. All the drive-motors are installed on the robot body to reduce the rotary inertia of the legs. Then a crank-rocker mechanism is used to transform continuous rotation of motors to back and forth motion of the leg. With this scheme, the motor may reach higher rotation speed since it drives a lighter leg with no change of the rotation direction. In addition, an elastic tendon is attached to the ankle to reduce the pulse stress on the leg. Kinematics and dynamics analysis demonstrates that the new design enlarges end-workspace, reduces driving torque and increases ground reaction force, which means the new robot has lager stride and higher swing frequency of leg to achieve faster moving.