Recently, the 15th International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM) World Congress was held at Krakow, Poland. The article entitled “Design of a Novel Compact Adaptive Ankle Exoskeleton for Walking Assistance” written by the team of Prof. Ding Xilun from the School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation was a finalist in the Best Paper Award competition and won the Best Student Paper Award. Shao Yixin, a PhD student of Beihang, is the first author of this paper, and Zhang Wuxiang, Xu Kun and Ding Xilun are the co-authors.
The congress was attended by more than 400 scholars from 66 countries and regions this year. 457 papers consisting of 403 oral presentations and 54 poster presentations were included in the congress proceedings.
The Chair of IFToMM awarded the certificate to Shao Yixin, the first author of the paper and a PhD student of Beihang
The certificate of the Best Student Paper Award
To overcome the limitation of existing ankle exoskeletons which have low power efficiency and are far from perfect in multitasking adaptation, a novel ankle exoskeleton driven by passively variable stiffness series elastic actuators (SECs) is developed based on the human gait data. The optimized ankle exoskeleton is able to adjust its stiffness on the basis of ankle joint moment and angle. The presented ankle exoskeleton is competent to different walking speeds and different load carriages, and the energy efficiency of the system is improved compared with the conventional ones. The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The bionic design of ankle exoskeletons
Being the largest international congress in the field of Mechanism and Machine Science, the IFToMM World Congress is hosted by IFToMM every four years, covering all relevant topics in Mechanism and Machine Science including robot and electromechanical integration, computational kinematics, man-machine system, multibody dynamics, biomechanics, connecting rod, cam and so on.
Reported by Liang Yongjian
Photographed by Zhang Wuxiang
Reviewed by Deng Yi
Edited by Jia Aiping
Translated by Xiong Ting
