Abstract
Problems such as knee osteoarthritis and weakening of leg muscles lead to difficulty and pain in walking for some people in their old age. This paper talks about a new product that aims to assist people suffering from such problems in walking while also trying to minimize further damage and reducing the pain associated with walking. The idea discussed uses the person’s body weight force through the landing foot to store energy in a torsional spring via a Bowden cable that engages with the knee joint only when the foot is in contact with the ground. It consists of two main modules, one to be worn at the knee and the other at the foot. The sensing of foot landing and lifting determines timing of engagement and disengagement of the spring with the joint and thereby the action of assistive extension moment on the knee. The idea was modeled through CAD, its parameters optimized and the ability of components verified through simulations.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our institute, the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, Tiruchirappalli, India and the Student Centre for Innovation in Engineering and Technology (SCIENT), NIT Tiruchirappalli for their support and encouragement.
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Kumar, K.A. et al. (2022). Novel Design of Selective Action Knee Assistive Device. In: Deepak, B.B.V.L., Parhi, D., Biswal, B., Jena, P.C. (eds) Applications of Computational Methods in Manufacturing and Product Design. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0296-3_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0296-3_19
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