Abstract: This paper presents a sensor-guided gait-synchronization system to help potential unilateral knee-injured people walk normally with a weight-supported lower-extremity-exoskeleton (LEE). This relieves the body weight loading on the knee-injured leg and synchronizes its motion with that of the healthy leg during the swing phase of walking. The sensor-guided gait-synchronization system is integrated with a body sensor network designed to sense the motion/gait of the healthy leg. Guided by the measured joint-angle trajectories, the motorized hip joint lifts the links during walking and synchronizes the knee-injured gait with the healthy gait by a half-cycle delay. The effectiveness of the LEE is illustrated experimentally. We compare the measured joint-angle trajectories between the healthy and knee-injured legs, the simulated knee forces, and the human-exoskeleton interaction forces. The results indicate that the motorized hip-controlled LEE can synchronize the motion/gait of the combined body-weight-supported LEE and injured leg with that of the healthy leg.

Key words: Sensor-guided; Lower-extremity-exoskeleton; Body sensor network; Gait synchronization; Weight-support

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