Design of Powered Knee Exoskeleton by TRIZ

Ang, Cheng Heng (2018) Design of Powered Knee Exoskeleton by TRIZ. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

A powered exoskeleton that has high power output but is too heavy for a user to carry around while a light weight fully mechanical exoskeleton has too low output power of the powered exoskeleton for the ease of wearing by patient through new design of structure and improve the power performance of the exoskeleton so that the patient can move as they want. The research methodology to design a better exoskeleton that meets the objectives, methodology must be well arranged. TRIZ methodology, SolidWork Software, EMG study, will be recommended to generate the new design. Therefore, project time management is very important and must be well scheduled. An existing knee exoskeleton, Semi Powered Knee Exoskeleton (SPoKE) will be selected to further study oriented to the objectives. Problems were found with the SPoKE and will be improved at the end of the project. The application of TRIZ will suggest inventive principles, trends and methods to solve the contradictive problem found in the selected knee exoskeleton. The methodology will tackle the problem by Function Analysis, Engineering Contradiction, Physical Contradiction, Substance-Field Models, Trends of Engineering System Evolution, and Feature Transfer. These TRIZ tools have suggested several inventive principles in generating solutions. Also, the SolidWorks helps to determine the properties of the final design to make comparison with the SPoKE. With the suggested inventive principles, after filter of workability, few are selected and conceptualised to the new design with few alternative. The optimal designs was selected and integrated with one another to have a final design of knee exoskeleton namely KNEXT with a silent “K”. The KNEXT are produced with lower weight and better performance.