Structural Design and Link Optimization for a Lower Limb Exoskeleton with Four Link Knee Joints

To help individuals alleviate pressure on the knees and enhance mobility. In this paper, a lower limb exoskeleton with a multi-link lower limb is designed. In order to design a lower limb exoskeleton coupled with human motion, the behavior of the human lower limb is analyzed. The stress and deformation of the lower limb exoskeleton under different loads are analyzed by ANSYS Workbench. The results show that the exoskeleton can effectively bear external loads. The kinematics of the lower extremity exoskeleton are analyzed based on the D-H method. Then the lower limb exoskeleton modeling is simulated and analyzed through the Matlab Robot toolbox, which verifies the movement correctness of the designed lower limb exoskeleton. The force transmission model of the multi-link lower limb exoskeleton is established, and the length of links and the torque transmission performance of the knee joint are optimized by the Genetic Algorithm. The results show that when the knee joint is at [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text], the optimized lower limb exoskeleton can obtain 0–32.5[Formula: see text]NM more output torque than the original lower limb exoskeleton.