Lower Body Exoskeleton

¿What is a exoskeleton?

Exoskeletons are wearable robots, modeled in the form of orthoses. They can be of two types, motorized or without motors and without batteries. Wearable robots are human symbiotic robotic systems. We have another classification between motorized and passive skeletons.

We can say that passive exoskeletons help to perform tasks that involve some physical wear and tear on people, but without actually increasing human capabilities. On the other hand, motorized skeletons can be classified as assistance or enhancement.

As for enhancing exoskeletons, their function is more oriented towards increasing the user's strength to, for example, lift heavy weights with ease; there are multiple applications of this type of mechanical frame: they range from industrial applications, to health and rehabilitation, and even military applications.

Exoskeletons are most commonly used in the health sector and, in particular, in rehabilitation medicine. The main objective of exoskeletons is to help people who have suffered some type of accident and need to walk or function normally again

Why we did it

We did this project as a work that we will carry out throughout this semester, which will be a lower body exoskeleton with a height of 30 centimeters made from MDF and will move with the help of servomotors, it will have to move and cover a distance without fall down.

For this project we will use 3mm MDF as the main materials as support material and we will use servomotors to move the pieces, to fasten the servomotors we use the Screws a

Knowing that there are three main articulations involved in the gait cycle, we made our first sketches with the idea of simulating hip, knee and ankle with servomotors, and use the mdf pieces to represent thigh, calf and feet.

Once the idea for the exosqueleton was drafted, we used SolidWorks to make the pieces, the length of the thigh and calf were based on the average scale for a human leg, making the feet larger to ensure a wider support base.

With the pieces designed, the DXF file was created and sent to the laser cutter to make the different MDF pieces.

To add more support to the exosqueleton, two shoes were printed using PLA, this helped to keep the servomotor of the ankle in the correct position and provide stability to the articulation.

With the pieces built in SolidWorks, they were assembled to simulate the exosqueleton with the servomotors included in the structure.