Paper Info
Title
Developing safe fall strategies for lower limb exoskeletons
Abstract
One of the main challenges in the use of a powered lower limb exoskeleton (LLE) is to ensure that balance is maintained throughout the operation of the device. Since no control strategy has yet been implemented that prevents falls in the case of a loss of balance, head or other serious injuries may occur during independent use of LLEs in the event of a fall. These safety concerns limit LLEs in the community to supervised use only. Using the backward fall as a model, we used optimization techniques to develop safe fall control strategies in order to avoid head impact and mitigate the impact velocity of the hips. From available human biomechanics data, we first developed an optimization methodology to study falls of healthy people. The results showed similar kinematic and dynamic characteristics to findings of previous studies on real-life human falls. Second, we extended the optimization methodology to include characteristics of a hypothetical LLE and to generate optimal joint trajectories and optimal torque profiles for the fall duration. The results revealed that by applying the optimal fall strategy, the severity of a simulated fall was minimized compared to when the device fell with locked joints (i.e., how currently used exoskeletons fall): head impact was avoided and hip impact velocity was reduced by more than 50%.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1109/ICORR.2017.8009266
2017 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR)
Keywords
Field
DocType
Accidental Falls,Biomechanical Phenomena,Equipment Design,Exoskeleton Device,Humans,Lower Extremity,Models, Biological
Torque,Kinematics,Medical robotics,Simulation,Lower limb,Exoskeleton Device,Exoskeleton,Biomechanics,Engineering,Robot
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
2017
1945-7898
978-1-5386-2297-1
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
4
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mahsa Khalili101.01
Jaimie F Borisoff201.01
H. F. Machiel Van Der Loos37522.83