Design and Performance Evaluation of a Knee Assist Exoskeleton Based on Bowden Cables Transmission

Firstly, A new type of lower limb knee joint Bowden cables driven exoskeleton has been designed. In response to the problem that previous rope driven exoskeletons could not achieve bidirectional assistance using only a single Bowden cable, a bidirectional transmission mechanism was designed using two Bowden cables, ultimately achieving bidirectional assistance function for the knee joint. Finite element analysis was conducted on the key components of this exoskeleton; Secondly, regarding the control part of the exoskeleton, the author designed an adaptive filter by combining fast Fourier transform and adaptive minimum mean square algorithm, which achieved precise tracking of exoskeleton motion and optimized the human-computer interaction experience; Design experiments to analyze and evaluate the assist performance of this exoskeleton. Under the condition of no load, the assist efficiency of the exoskeleton varies between 13.27% and 0.86% when running at speeds ranging from 4km/h to 14km/h; When walking at a constant speed of 4km/h and with a load ranging from 5kg to 25kg, the assist efficiency of the exoskeleton varies between 8.38% and 0.49%. In addition, some tests were conducted on the comfort of wearing exoskeletons, and the test results showed that the comfort of wearing exoskeletons is good, and there is still some room for optimization.