Augmented Modeling of a Lower Limb Assistant Robot and Human Body

Abstract

Rehabilitation robotics is nowadays one of the most attractive fields in robotics. This paper focuses on modeling of a lower limb walking assist device (RoboWalk), augmented with the human body. RoboWalk has been designed to assist either the elderly people or those with malfunctioning in lower limb to do their daily tasks. Modeling the assistive device augmented to human model is highly important for design improvements and controller developments. In such complicated cases, simulators are appropriate tools to analyze the dynamics of robotic devices and understand how the device works which leads to the system improvements. In this paper, a human model that is properly appended to the RoboWalk has been analyzed using the OpenSim software. The human model includes 37 degrees of freedom to define joint kinematics, 80 muscle units actuating the lower limbs, and 17 torque actuators driving the upper body. To this end, the robot has been first added to the human model, then constraints have been properly defined, finally simulation has been implemented by adding a specified gait to human model. Obtained results will be discussed which reveal a reasonable performance of the whole system.