Development of A Passively Powered Knee Exoskeleton for Squat Lifting

Abstract

This paper proposes a knee exoskeleton with passive-powering mechanism to provide power assistance to the knee joint during squat lifting of objects from the ground. It is designed to capture and store 20% of the biomechanical energy dissipated at the biological knee joint during decent phase and return the harnessed energy in the ascent phase in a squatting cycle. The effectiveness of the proposed system was verified by evaluating performance of key muscles of knee joint using surface electromyography (sEMG) signals. Statistical data from experiments revealed a reduction of peak root-mean-square averages of sEMG signals of knee extensor muscles by 30 - 40% during squatting.