The external skeletons, Exoskeletons, are not a new research area in this highly
developed world. They are widely used in helping the wearer to enhance human strength,
endurance, and speed while walking with them. Most exoskeletons are designed for the
whole body and are powered due to their applications and high performance needs.
This thesis introduces a novel design of a three-degree of freedom parallel robotic
structured hip exoskeleton, which is quite different from these existing exoskeletons. An
exoskeleton unit for walking typically is designed as a serial mechanism which is used
for the entire leg or entire body. This thesis presents a design as a partial manipulator
which is only for the hip. This has better advantages when it comes to marketing the
product, these include: light weight, easy to wear, and low cost. Furthermore, most
exoskeletons are designed for lower body are serial manipulators, which have large
workspace because of their own volume and occupied space. This design introduced in
this thesis is a parallel mechanism, which is more stable, stronger and more accurate.
These advantages benefit the wearers who choose this product.
This thesis focused on the analysis of the structure of this design, and verifies if
the design has a reasonable and reliable structure. Therefore, a series of analysis has been
done to support it. The mobility analysis and inverse kinematic solution are derived, and
the Jacobian matrix was derived analytically. Performance of the CAD model has been
checked by the finite element analysis in Ansys, which is based on applied force and
moment. The comparison of the results from tests has been illustrated clearly for stability
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and practicability of this design. At the end of this thesis, an optimization of the hip
exoskeleton is provided, which offers better structure of this design. / UOIT
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OOSHDU.10155/183 |
| Date | 01 July 2011 |
| Creators | Pan, Min |
| Contributors | Zhang, Dan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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