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Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Lower-Limb Exoskeleton for Assisting Workers With Motorized Tuning of Squat Heights

This paper presents the E-LEG, a novel semi-passive lower-limb exoskeleton for worker squatting assistance, with motorized tuning of the assistive squatting height. Compared with other passive industrial exoskeletons for the lower-limbs, the E-LEG presents novel design features namely inertial sensor for measuring the tilt angle of thigh and the novel electromagnetic switch for adjusting squat height. These features could enhance the effectiveness of the system. In addition to the introduction to exoskeleton design, this paper also reports the systematic experimental evaluation of human subjects. With the assistance of different conditions, the variability of muscular activity was evaluated in long-term static squatting task. The set of metrics to evaluate the effect of the device included leg muscle activity, plantar pressure fluctuation, plantar pressure center fluctuation and gait angles. Results show that the exoskeleton can reduce the muscular activity of the user during squatting, and it will have little affect the normal gait of the user during walking. In this study, we found that the E-LEG exoskeleton has potential effectiveness in reducing the muscular strain on long-term continuous squatting activities.