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Design of a Series Elastic Tendon Actuator Based on Gait Analysis for a Walking Assistance Exosuit

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Abstract

Exosuits are wearable robots that enhance a person’s muscular strength from outside the body. Many exosuits use tendon actuators with multiple wires that work similarly to human muscles to minimize user unfamil-iarity caused by the discrepancy between the human body’s degree of freedom and the influence of the mass of the exoskeleton. This paper describes the design of a series elastic tendon actuator (SETA) to be used in exosuits. The SETA performs the agonist and antagonist functions of human muscles using two internal wires as well as elastic elements (springs) to measure the human-robot interaction force and overcome differences in variations occurring between the wires. We defined design objectives and selected the main components based on biomechanical gait analysis to design a small SETA. Moreover, we conducted an experiment to verify the basic performance of our SETA design.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Convergence Research Center for Collaborative Robot, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology, 333 Techno Jungang-daero Hyeonpung-myeon, Dalseong-gun, Daegu, 42988, Korea

    Hee Don Lee & Tae Hun Kang

  2. Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement (KIRIA), 77 Nowon-ro, Buk-gu, Daegu, 41496, Korea

    Jeon Il Moon

Authors
  1. Hee Don Lee
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  2. Jeon Il Moon
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  3. Tae Hun Kang
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Correspondence to Hee Don Lee or Tae Hun Kang.

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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Recommended by Editor Doo Yong Lee. This work was supported by the Technology Innovation Program (10084657, Development of Functional Safety Technology and Risk Assessment Mitigation Technology based on International Safety Standards for Robots Operating in Human Contact Environment) funded by the Ministry of Trade, industry & Energy (MOTIE, Korea) and parallel supported by the Commercialization Promotion Agency for R&D Outcomes(COMPA) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT) [Development of Self-paced Treadmill for Goal-Oriented Training].

Hee Don Lee received his B.S. degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the Catholic University of Daegu, Korea, in 2006, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Hanyang University, Korea, in 2008 and 2014, respectively. He is currently a senior researcher in DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology). He is a Senior Research Scientist in DGIST. His research interests include wearable robots, physical human-robot interactions, bio-mechanics, and robot force control.

Jeon Il Moon received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea, in 1984, and an M.S. degree in the major of Robot Control in Mechanical Engineering, KAIST(Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) in 1986, and a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Syracuse University, New York, U.S.A. in 1998. He was a team leader in R&D center of LG Industrial Systems from 1986 to 1993, and was the Director of R&D center of LG Industrial Systems until 2006. He was an associate professor and the dean of the department of Robotics Engineering, Hoseo University from 2007 to 2010. Since 2011, he has been with DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology), Korea. He was the Director and the Vice President of DGIST Research Institute from 2012 to 2016. Since 2018, He is currently the President of KIRIA (Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement), Korea. His current research interests include health & rehabilitation robotics, embedded control & intelligence control, robot technology based smart factory.

Tae Hun Kang received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sung Kyun Kwan University, Korea, in 2000, 2002, and 2006, respectively. From 2006 to 2011, he was a Senior Research Scientist in PIRO (Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics), Korea. He was an Adjunct Professor with Yeung Nam University, Korea, from 2010 to 2012. Since 2013, he has been with DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology), Korea. He is also a Senior Research Scientist in DGIST. His interest includes legged robots, robot mechanism design, field application of robots, and rehabilitation robots.

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Lee, H.D., Moon, J.I. & Kang, T.H. Design of a Series Elastic Tendon Actuator Based on Gait Analysis for a Walking Assistance Exosuit. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 17, 2940–2947 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-018-0492-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-018-0492-0

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