One Novel Hydraulic Actuating System for the Lower-Body Exoskeleton

Abstract The hydraulic exoskeleton is one research hotspot in the field of robotics, which can take heavy load due to the high power density of the hydraulic system. However, the traditional hydraulic system is normally centralized, inefficient, and bulky during application, which limits its development in the exoskeleton. For improving the robot’s performance, its hydraulic actuating system should be optimized further. In this paper a novel hydraulic actuating system (HAS) based on electric-hydrostatic actuator is proposed, which is applied to hip and knee joints. Each HAS integrates an electric servo motor, a high-speed micro pump, a specific tank, and other components into a module. The specific parameters are obtained through relevant simulation according to human motion data and load requirements. The dynamic models of the HAS are built, and validated by the system identification. Experiments of trajectory tracking and human-exoskeleton interaction are carried out, which demonstrate the proposed HAS has the ability to be applied to the exoskeleton. Compared with the previous prototype, the total weight of the HAS in the robot is reduced by about 40%, and the power density is increased by almost 1.6 times.