Influence of Motion Restrictions in an Ankle Exoskeleton on Gait Kinematics and Stability in Straight Walking

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Dezman, Miha, Marquardt, Charlotte, Ugur, Adnan, Asfour, Tamim
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Dezman, Miha
Marquardt, Charlotte
Ugur, Adnan
Asfour, Tamim
author_facet Dezman, Miha
Marquardt, Charlotte
Ugur, Adnan
Asfour, Tamim
contents Exoskeleton devices impose kinematic constraints on a user's motion and affect their stability due to added mass but also due to the simplified mechanical design. This paper investigates how these constraints resulting from simplified mechanical designs impact the gait kinematics and stability of users by wearing an ankle exoskeleton with changeable degree of freedom (DoF). The exoskeleton used in this paper allows one, two, or three DoF at the ankle, simulating different levels of mechanical complexity. This effect was evaluated in a pilot study consisting of six participants walking on a straight path. The results show that increasing the exoskeleton DoF results in an improvement of several metrics, including kinematics and gait parameters. The transition from 1 DoF to 2 DoF is shown to have a larger effect than the transition from 2 DoF to 3 DoF for an ankle exoskeleton. However, an exoskeleton with 3 DoF at the ankle featured the best results. Increasing the number of DoF resulted in stability values closer the values when walking without the exoskeleton, despite the added weight of the exoskeleton.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_06054
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Influence of Motion Restrictions in an Ankle Exoskeleton on Gait Kinematics and Stability in Straight Walking
Dezman, Miha
Marquardt, Charlotte
Ugur, Adnan
Asfour, Tamim
Robotics
Exoskeleton devices impose kinematic constraints on a user's motion and affect their stability due to added mass but also due to the simplified mechanical design. This paper investigates how these constraints resulting from simplified mechanical designs impact the gait kinematics and stability of users by wearing an ankle exoskeleton with changeable degree of freedom (DoF). The exoskeleton used in this paper allows one, two, or three DoF at the ankle, simulating different levels of mechanical complexity. This effect was evaluated in a pilot study consisting of six participants walking on a straight path. The results show that increasing the exoskeleton DoF results in an improvement of several metrics, including kinematics and gait parameters. The transition from 1 DoF to 2 DoF is shown to have a larger effect than the transition from 2 DoF to 3 DoF for an ankle exoskeleton. However, an exoskeleton with 3 DoF at the ankle featured the best results. Increasing the number of DoF resulted in stability values closer the values when walking without the exoskeleton, despite the added weight of the exoskeleton.
title Influence of Motion Restrictions in an Ankle Exoskeleton on Gait Kinematics and Stability in Straight Walking
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06054