Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Non-anthropomorphic Passive Load-carrying Exoskeleton

Soldiers are often required to carry heavy loads during long distance march. Such load carriage can easily induce joint injuries and foot blisters, which further reduce the wearer’s task performance. To assist human walking with load carriage, various types of robotic devices are proposed, such as powered exoskeletons, supernumerary robotic limbs and suspended backpacks. However, these devices have individual shortcomings. This paper proposes a non-anthropomorphic passive load-carrying exoskeleton, which can dynamically support the carried load during the walking rhythm via a passive legged structure. This exoskeleton can reduce the load borne by human without energy input. The simple and passive structure design brings the highest robustness and flexibility. The simulation based on the mathematic model shows that the exoskeleton can reduce the foot pressure of the users. Such analysis results are also verified by the walking experiment. The experiment results show that the exoskeleton can transfer on average 68.0% of the load to the ground while standing, and 24.6% of the load while walking. The maximum load is reduced by 22.1% during walking.