Simulation of exoskeleton ZMP during walking for balance control

Abstract

This paper presents Zero Moment Point (ZMP) based lower limb rehabilitation exoskeleton walking balance estimation. To acquire exoskeleton walking ZMP, simulation of exoskeleton 3D model was conducted by means of MatLab SimMechanics. Exoskeleton support leg hip abduction joint was driven to follow human normal walking hip abduction trajectory. Thanks to the hip abduction joint, most part of the exoskeleton ZMP overlapped with the sole area well. While without hip joint abduction, the exoskeleton ZMP of this common design disjoint from the sole area. Meanwhile, all kinds of hip abduction trajectories were applied to modify exoskeleton ZMP and the results proved that exoskeleton with only support leg hip joint driven to follow human normal walking hip abduction trajectory is the most suitable way to help balance walking.