Control Method And Experimental Research On Elastic Actuation Of Exoskeleton Robot

The wearable exoskeleton robot, forming a human-machine interactive systemwith the human body, has wide development prospect. The exoskeleton robot in thispaper is designed for earthquake rescuers.In the research areas of exoskeleton robot, mobile robot, manipulator etc,elastic actuator has become a research hotspot, due to its characteristics of energystorage, impact resistance, safe human-machine interaction and so on. The purposeof this paper is to design a control method for elastic actuation of the exoskeletonrobot, which can enhance performance of the human-machine interactive system.Based on the general model of the series elastic actuation joint, systematicanalysis of the characteristics of the output impedance and energy consumption isdone. Analysis results show that, introduction of the elastic element reduces thesystem output impedance and energy consumption of the system.Based on theoretical analysis of the series elastic actuation joint, calibrationexperiment of elasticity and torque control bandwidth determination experiment areaccomplished. A double closed loop cascade control method based on the externalcontact force loop and the internal SEA force loop is recommended. After analysisof effects of specific parameters on the system performance, joint following controlexperiments based on the feedback of external sensors and internal sensors are done.With the framework of exoskeleton robot distributed control system，thehardware system and software system are completed The hardware system consistsof host computer module, motion and servo control module, sensor module, securitymodule and power supply module. The software system consists of human-machineinteraction module, communication module, data acquisition module, motion controlmodule and security module.A mobile platform and hanging device are built for experiments of theexoskeleton robot. A series of tests and experiments are carried out, which verifythe feasibility of the use of series elastic actuation technology in the exoskeletonand the effectiveness of the control method for the elastic actuation.