Powered Lower Limb Exoskeleton for Walking Rehabilitation and Assistance*

In this paper, a lower limb powered exoskeleton was designed for rehabilitation assistance, aimed at aiding stroke patients in their rehabilitation to restore normal gait patterns. This exoskeleton was equipped with novel motorized linear actuators and magnetorheological (MR) dampers, which can enable the exoskeleton to provide the required assistance function precisely with lower energy consumption. In addition, two actuators installed at the waist were employed to drive the exoskeleton to turn left and right actively. We detailed the hardware design of the exoskeleton, including mechanical structures, novel linear actuator, MR damper and joint actuation units. Human testing on a healthy subject was conducted preliminarily to validate the functions of the exoskeleton. The results indicated that the developed exoskeleton’s hip, knee, and ankle joints can replicate the reference angles accurately during normal walking.