Lower Limb Human Muscle Enhancer

This paper describes the design, control, and testing of a Human Muscle Enhancer (HME) system that will augment the muscle capabilities of subjects requiring partial lower-limb weight-bearing gait support. The HME described in this paper is a pneumatically actuated quick connecting exoskeleton system that attaches to the foot and hip area of the body, thus “closing” the lower body kinematic chain. Control of the system is achieved by using encoders at the knee joints and Myo-Pneumatic (MP) Sensors implanted into the shoes and outer garments of the human. To test this design concept, a lower body exoskeleton test fixture has been fabricated. The test fixture mimics the human leg with the top cylinder providing the body weight on the leg. Another cylinder acts as leg muscles to provide the adjustable human reaction of the leg. Preliminary open and closed loop control tests have been performed that demonstate the capability of controlling the HME using the MP sensors.