Design and Structural Evaluation of a Lower Limb Passive Exoskeleton

Many applications require a human being to lift heavy weights which can be a strain on their backs. The idea behind Exoskeleton limbs is to distribute the carried weight on several humanoid legs so that the strain on the human body can be considerably decreased. The research presented in this paper is a fully actuated light weight Exoskeleton, controlled passively by the motion of the human leg. This paper focuses on Stress and Deformation analysis done on various components of the Exoskeleton to determine optimum materials for construction and whether the design is suitable to be worn by a human. Results indicate that this design reduces the stress and deformation on critical parts of the structure while providing a light weight solution. Calibration of position and force measurement sensors are also presented in the paper.