Novel design and speed-adaptive control of a cable-driven parallel elastic hip exoskeleton for compliant locomotion assistance

Robotic hip exoskeletons hold enormous potential to enhance human locomotion. However, the rigid structures and predefined control laws limit their compliance and adaptability during dynamic human-robot interactions. Here, a novel parallel elastic hip exoskeleton is developed for human locomotion assistance. The exoskeleton utilizes a remote cable actuation system to improve compliance and incorporates a parallel elastic mechanism at the hip wearable components to enhance actuator energy efficiency by generating a compensatory torque. For exoskeleton control, a speed-adaptive torque control strategy is implemented to modulate the assistance torque in real time, based on the user’s gait phase and hip movement frequency estimated by adaptive oscillators. The system was tested on seven healthy subjects, and preliminary results indicate that the parallel elastic element achieves a 40.2 % reduction in peak motor torque through energy conversion. The controller exhibits excellent torque tracking performance and effectively extracts human gait features across walking speeds with hip frequency correlation (R${}^2$ = 0.89). Furthermore, the hip exoskeleton significantly reduced users’ peak hip moments and muscle activity while preserving natural kinematics. The parallel elastic hip exoskeleton demonstrates strong adaptive assistive capabilities and is expected to enhance locomotion in real-world applications.