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Whole-body Control Based Lifting Assistance Simulation for Exoskeletons

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  • Robot and Applications
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Abstract

Exoskeletons can help humans in a variety of ways in performing tasks. In particular, during the lifting operation, a human places a great burden on the knee or waist joint, and the exoskeleton can reduce the risks of this task. However, due to the weight of the exoskeleton itself and the movement of the overall center of gravity, balance ability and efficiency may decrease. Therefore, an appropriate assistance torque distribution strategy is required to achieve high performance with the exoskeleton. In order to solve the aforementioned problem, we propose an assistance method based on whole-body control. The proposed algorithm is meaningful because it is different from other simple model-based controllers. The controller fully utilize the dynamics to achieve a high performance. In addition, by adding a straight leg cost term, the singularity problem in the fully extended configuration was solved. This method finds the optimal solution that satisfies various constraints and minimizes the objective functions. Each objective is composed of a balancing-related term that minimizes the variation in the center of gravity, a term that supports the weight of the human and exoskeleton, a term that solves the singularity problem and a term related to efficiency. In this paper, first, a motion capture experiment is performed to analyze a human’s lifting motion. Through this experiment, the trajectory of each joint angle is obtained. With PD (proportional-derivative) feedback from the joint trajectories, the exoskeleton generates human torque in the simulation and implements a lifting operation. Second, a simulation is performed with the proposed controller. As a result, it is confirmed that the proposed method reduces the amount of human joint torque and increases stability and efficiency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34141, Korea

    Jeonguk Kang, Donghyun Kim & Kyung-Soo Kim

  2. Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence, Pohang, 37666, Korea

    Hyun-Joon Chung & Kwang-Woo Jeon

Authors
  1. Jeonguk Kang
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  2. Donghyun Kim
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  3. Hyun-Joon Chung
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  4. Kwang-Woo Jeon
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  5. Kyung-Soo Kim
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Correspondence to Kyung-Soo Kim.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors should ensure that there is no potential conflict of interest possibly influencing the interpretation of data in the paper. Also, the authors who have no relevant financial interests or private connections should provide a statement indicating that they have no interests related to the material in the manuscript. For example, “The authors declare that there is no competing financial interest or personal relationship that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.”

Jeonguk Kang received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2018 and 2020, respectively. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at KAIST. His research interests include legged robots and state estimation.

Donghyun Kim received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at KAIST. His research interests include legged robots, whole-body control, pneumatic actuators, and their control.

Hyun-Joon Chung received his B.E. degree in mechatronics engineering from Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea, in 1996 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. He was a research assistant and postdoctoral research scholar at the Center for Computer Aided Design from 2005 to 2015. He joined the Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence as a senior researcher in 2015. He is currently a principal researcher and the head of the AI Robotics Center at the Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence. He serves as a general affairs director of the Field Robot Society in Korea. His research interests include dynamics and control, optimization algorithms, computational decision making, modeling and simulation, and robotics.

Kwang-Woo Jeon received his B.E. and M.S. degrees in mechanical design engineering from Hanbat National University, Daejeon, Korea, in 2011 and 2013, respectively. He was an Assistant Researcher of research division of Korea Institute of Robot and technology convergence, from 2012 to 2013. And, he joined the HanKuk fiber as a Senior Researcher from 2014 to 2015. He joined the Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence as a Senior Researcher in 2015. He is currently a Senior Researcher of AI Robotics Center in Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence. His research interests include design of rehabilitation robot and human interaction robot.

Kyung-Soo Kim received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 1993, 1995, and 1999, respectively. He was a chief researcher with LG Electronics, Inc., from 1999 to 2003 and a DVD group manager with STMicroelectronics Company, Ltd., from 2003 to 2005. In 2005, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Polytechnic University, Siheung, Korea, as a faculty member. Since 2007, he has been with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST. He serves as an associate editor of Automatica and the Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology. His research interests include control theory, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles.

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This research was financially supported by the Institute of Civil Military Technology Cooperation and funded by the Defense Acquisition Program Administration and Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of the Korean government under grant No. 19-CM-GU-01. Jeonguk Kang and Donghyun Kim are co-first authors.

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Kang, J., Kim, D., Chung, HJ. et al. Whole-body Control Based Lifting Assistance Simulation for Exoskeletons. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 21, 1950–1958 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-021-1001-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-021-1001-4

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