Design And Implementation Of Wearable Exoskeleton Mechanical Leg Control System

An exoskeleton robot is a robotic device that combines human intelligence with mechanical strength.The wearable exoskeleton mechanical leg(WEML)is a kind of exoskeleton robot.Its main function is to assist active or passive rehabilitation training for patients with walking function damage(PsWFD),thereby achieving re-standing and walking,and helping the patients to recover certain self-care ability.In the absence of a corresponding software control system,a WEML consisting only hardware would be meaningless.Therefore,the software control system is an essential integral part of the WEML.Based on ARM hardware platform,Linux operating system and C programming language,this paper reconstructs the software control system of the existing WEML hardware platform of South China University of Technology(SCUT).The original control system has five basic functions including stand-up,first step,walking,resume-standing and sit-down.In addition,two new basic functions,namely flex-leg and stepping,are added in the reconstructed control system,this paper designs and implements a set of WEML control system with basic functions such as flexing leg,standing up,stepping,walking and sitting down.The main work of this paper is summarized as follows:Firstly,based on the existing WEML plateform of SCUT,according to the software and hardware structure of the original control system,combined with the practical application requirements of the wearable exoskeleton mechanical leg for PsWFD,The requirements of the WEML control system in terms of application function,system function,reliability,robustness and scalability are further analyzed.On this basis,two new functions,namely flex-leg and stepping,are added,and the original control system structure including five basic functions,namely stand-up,first step,walking,resume-standing and sit-down,is redesigned.Through the stripping device detection and motor control functions,the original control system is reconfigured to a low-coupling control system with nine functional modules including master control module,system initialization and self-test,flex-leg,stand-up,stepping,first step,walking,resumestanding and sit-down.Then,based on the original control system,the C programming language and the principle of code reuse,the master control module,equipment detection and motor control functions were redesigned and implemented,and flex-leg and stepping were realized.These two new features extend the WEML control system from five basic functions to seven basic functions including flex-leg,stand-up,stepping,first step,walking,resume-standing and sit-down.Finally,the control system was deployed to the existing WEML of SCUT and related tests were carried out.The results of functional test,simulation test and real patient test show that the WEML control system designed and implemented in this paper is stable and reliable,and can accurately control the motors to smoothly complete various basic functional actions to meet the requirements of PsWFD.In a word,this work achieves the intended goals.