Scale Force Control of an Exoskeleton for Human Performance Augmentation

Lin Lang, Junhao Xiao, Yunshu Sun, Huimin Lu, Zongtan Zhou, Chunbaixue Yang

Abstract: Exoskeletons for human performance augmentation have been widely applied in many environments, ranging from military, industry, to construction. For load-carrying augmentation exoskeletons, one of the key issues is to control the human-robot interaction (HRI) force. This paper firstly proposes a unified framework for scale force control (SFC) of human-bearing augmentation exoskeleton (HBAE) and robot-bearing augmentation exoskeleton (RBAE). Furthermore, a mid-level SFC method was proposed, in the light of both cognitive and physical HRIs (cHRI and pHRI). On this basis, a hybrid low-level controller was designed for load-carrying exoskeletons (LCEs). Finally, the proposed method was simulated on an LCE. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our SFC approach: the pilot is always provided with an arbitrary scaled-down interaction force, regardless of the load state.