A model-free control method for estimating the joint angles of the knee exoskeleton

This article describes a model-free adaptive control method for knee joint exoskeleton, which avoids the complexity of human–exoskeleton modeling. An important feature of the proposed controller is that it uses the input and output data of the knee joint angle to control the exoskeleton. Furthermore, discrete sliding mode control law and prior torque are introduced to improve the accuracy and robustness of the system. Prior torque of knee joint is obtained through the walking simulation of human–exoskeleton modeling. Specially, the experiment is carried out by using the co-simulation automatic dynamic analysis of mechanical systems and MATLAB. Data from these assessments indicate that the proposed strategy enables the knee exoskeleton to track the trajectory of angle well and has a good performance on walking assistance.