Coordinator

Design Innovation Centre

Islamic University of Science and Technology
Subject: Project Proposal.

Sir,

Kindly find the attached a project proposal entitled “Design, fabrication and control knee
exoskeleton for assistive walking.” submitted for funding and facilitation through
DIC@IUST.

Falak Fatima and Mahshida Hamid

ME-17-04 and ME-17-16
E-mail ID : falakfatima959@gmail.com , mahshidahamid@gmail.com
Cell No: 6005640860,7006967938
Department: Mechanical engineering
 Design, fabrication and control of knee exoskeleton for

assistive walking.

Abstract

This project is about the design of an exoskeleton to assist children with dysfunctional

knee. The design involves use of slider crank mechanism powered by a battery driven DC

motor to attain a desired motion of the knee during assistive walking. The project would

specifically involve the synthesis of mechanism, design, fabrication and control of the

exoskeleton.

Introduction

Work in the lower limb exoskeleton began primarily in 1960, since then there have been

developments in it. In the following work we will present our design concept, detailed

describing principle. We will limit our scope to devise a mechanism that would provide some

means augmenting power at knee joint of lower extremities. Finally, we present a discussion

of the concept, identifying the challenges that the disabled people face and how our model will

be effective in design and cost.

Existing solutions
1. Design of a quasi-passive knee exoskeleton to assist running [Aaron M. Dollar]

• Device doesn’t add mechanical energy at the knee Stores and releases energy in a

spring that is placed and removed from being in parallel with the biological joint.

• Motorized mechanism is associated with knee braces in this device.

 Fig 1.1 Exoskeleton prototype worn by user. [1]

2. Power assist system HAL-3 for gait disorder person’ [H. kawamoto and Y.Sankai ]

• Utilizes a number of sensing modalities for control like electromyographic

electrodes.

• Potentiometers for the joint angle measurement.

• Sensors for ground reaction forces, gyroscope and accelerometer for torso posture
estimation.

• DC motor as an actuator and harmonic drive to generate torques of each joint.

 Figure 1.2 Hybrid assistive leg-3 system configuration[2]

3. Powered hip exoskeletons can reduce the user’s hip and ankle muscle activation during
walking.[Tommaso Lenzi, Maria Chiara Carrozza and Sunil k. Agrawal]
• Explored the human adaptation to the action of a powered lower limb exoskeleton

• Proposes a controller that provide nominal torque profile.

• From experimental results, user can reduce the muscle effort compared to free
walking when assisted by the exoskeleton.

Figure 1.3 ALEX-2 exoskeleton

Objectives And methodology

• Design of exoskeleton to assist knee joint.

• PID control of the mechanism.
• Fabrication of exoskeleton prototype.

The methodology of our work would include designing the exoskelton on the basis of existing
literature survey. Then we would work on controlling the prototype using PID strategy in
Simulink and Microcontroller. Finally we would fabricate the protype using 3D printer and
assemsble the parts.

Work plan

1. Week 1: Synthesis of mechanism for enabling the required knee movement.

2. Week 2: Static Analysis and development of CAD model thereby for designing the

actuator mechanism.

3. Week 3-4: Control of the mechanism via PID in simspaces/Simulink.

4. Week 5-6: Fabrication of required parts using 3D printer.

5. Week 6-7: Assembly and integration of the system.

6. Week 8: Testing and validation.

Budgetary requirement

Head Amount

DC motor with encoder (30-60W) and Driver 3500

Bearings/Lead Screw/Belt/Nuts/Screws Etc 2000

Carbon fibre tubes (part of mechanism) 1500

Microcontroller 500

3D Printer Facility -

Battery /Power Supply 500

Total 8000 (INR)
References
[1] A. M. Dollar and H. Herr, "Design of a quasi-passive knee exoskeleton to assist running,"
2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2008, pp. 747-
754, doi: 10.1109/IROS.2008.4651202.
[2] T. Lenzi, M. C. Carrozza and S. K. Agrawal, "Powered Hip Exoskeletons Can Reduce the
User's Hip and Ankle Muscle Activations During Walking," in IEEE Transactions on Neural
Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 938-948, Nov. 2013, doi:
10.1109/TNSRE.2013.2248749.