Design of walking-assistive device on lower limb with fall-preventing mechanism
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
HSU, Heng-Chia
Abstract
The population of the elders has dramatically increased, and fall prevention has become an important issue for elders care. This paper attempts to design a lower-limb exoskeleton, which could fix the relative rotation of the thigh and calf at specific gait to make the function of fall prevention and helping elder’s walk. Unlike other assist devices, we replace the motor by special mechanism at knee joint for reducing the weight and making control easier on the device. We separate hip joint into two axes (rotation of flexion/extension and adduction/abduction) on the assistive device and make these two axes intersect at the center of the hip joint. Therefore, we can make the joint on the assistive device similar to hip joint. Based on human gait, we design a slider mechanism on the knee part that could be fixed for the leg at its state. Finally, we optimize the design and test a metal prototype. Through experiments, we measure the rotation about hip and knee to verify the function of our assistive device. About the fall-preventing mechanism, we can know the mechanism can reach our purpose, but we don’t know whether this method can reach fall-preventing. In future, we will find some methods to prove the fall-preventing.
Subjects
exoskeleton
gait analysis
prevent of falls
Type
thesis
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