Muscle Inspired Actuator Using Solenoids: Design of A Powered

Ankle-foot Exoskeleton

Tsung-Han Hsieh
Department of Bio-Industrial Mechatronics Engineering,
National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
e-mail: hsnu1152@gmail.com
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the biggest challenges in developing powered exoskeletons or active orthoses for either
able-bodied users or people suffering from lower extremity pathology is the way that the device works in
concert with the operators movements. The additional forces that the device provided, if not optimized
enough, might result in resisting operators motion rather than assisting [1]. Among the state-of-the-art
lower limb exoskeletons or active orthoses, the most commonly used actuators including: hydraulic
cylinders [2], electromagnetic dc motors with harmonic drives [3], and pneumatic actuators [4], were
shown in Fig. 1. These actuators are all stiff actuators which will lock themselves while idled, in other
words, the operators motion is limited by this locking mechanism. Therefore, for those powered
exoskeleton and active orthoses, detail sensory information of human motion is essential for
human/exoskeleton or human/orthotics interaction such as electromyography (EMG) to assess neural
activation of muscles, accelerometers for joint motions, and force sensors for detecting contact forces on
the ground. Furthermore, these actuators all have some drawbacks. Pneumatics and hydraulics actuators,
although were able to imitate the performance of natural muscle action and have a shape and feel similar
to natural muscles, they are noisy, difficult to control, and require additional pump to provide fluid energy,
which could be heavy and cannot be portable. Electromagnetic dc motors, on the other hand, do not offer
adequately high peaks or average power outputs, resulting in devices that are heavier than desired [5], [6].
In this proposal, a new type of actuator system, which was inspired by muscle physiology, was
proposed. Similar to the fundamental units in skeletal muscles called sarcomeres, the proposed actuator
system consists of many cellular units made of solenoids. This novel actuator system has several
advantages as follows: 1) Each solenoid has its own ON or OFF state just like muscle fibers which
are able to produce tension during ON state and simply relaxed (no tension generated) during OFF state
and is therefore easier to control for some simple tasks. 2) Solenoids are able to produce high peak forces
with fast speed and 3) they will not be interfering with operators movement during the OFF state since
the plungers of the solenoids can move freely during OFF state. In order to reduce the complexity of
analytical effort, a uni-articulate mechanism was designed, which functioned as an additional soleus
muscle and can therefore provide additional moment of plantar flexion for ankle joint during push-off.
Although having the potential to implement it in different tasks such as stair ambulation or jumping, the
application for this powered ankle-foot exoskeleton in this proposal is narrowed down to assist push-off
during normal ambulation. In the future, this actuator has the possibility to be implemented in robotics,
exoskeletons, and other orthotic devices.

Fig. 1. University of California at Berkeleys BLEEX exoskeleton, actuated by hydraulic cylinders [1], [2], HAL-5 exoskeleton,
actuated by dc motors with harmonic drives [1], [3], and Michigan ankle orthoses, actuated by pneumatic actuators [1], [4].
II. METHODS
A. System Architecture
The entire system architecture is shown in Fig. 2. The power source of the system is a bunch of
Li-Po batteries that can provide 24 volts. The power-manage circuit is consisted of voltage regulators that
are able to stabilize the power souce, providing a steady 24 volts and a 5 volts output. Since the batteries
do not have enough power to drive solenoids and the driver circuit directly, two voltage boosters were
used. The voltage boosters can bring the two output voltage from power-manage circuit up to 160 volts
and 15 volts separately. The 160 volts power is then stored in capacitors for further use, and the 15 volts
power was used to make the driver circuit for solenoids in operation. The driver circuit for solenoids is
actually an metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) array. The MOSFET functioned
as a high power switch that can be opened or closed by digital signals and each MOSFET controls
one solenoid. To detect gait events, the force sensitive resistors (FSRs, Interlink Electronics, Camarillo,
CA, USA) were used. The FSR functions as a switch, it cannot provide quantitative plantar force data, but
can detect whether the sensor is in contact with the ground or not. Once the push-off phase is detected, the
digital signals will be sent to the MOSFET array, letting the power stored in the capacitors to pass through
the solenoids.
The whole system will be controlled by an embedded computer, single-board RIO (sbRIO, National
Instruments, Austin, TX, USA). The sbRIO, as shown in Fig. 3, is a printed circuit board (PCB) that
integrated digital and analog I/O ports, a real-time processor, and a re-programmable field-programmable
gate array (FPGA) [7]. In this project, the sbRIO-9642 was chosen due to its abundant I/O ports. The
sbRIO will analyze the signals from FSRs, control the driver circuit base on the analytical results, and
control the charge of capacitors.



Fig. 2. System architecture. The sbRIO serves as system I/O, it can control whether the voltage booster should charge or not,
analyze the signals from FSRs, and control the firing time of solenoids. As soon as the push-off event is detected, the sbRIO will
make driver circuits release the stored energy, making the solenoids to generate pulling force.
B. Electromechanical Characteristics and Mechanical Design of Solenoids
The low-profile solenoid, SMT-3018SL (Tai-Shing Electronics Corp., Taipei, Taiwan), was selected
to work as the contractile element in the cellular units. This low-profile solenoid, as shown in Fig. 4 only
weighs 97 grams and is 3.4 centimeters long in diameter, is able to generate more than 7 kilograms peak
pulling force under 10% duty cycle [8]. The duty cycle is the ratio between the ON and OFF period and
can be calculated as (1):

" "
(%) 100%
" " " "
ON time
Duty cycle
ON time OFF time

(1)
One drawback of using solenoid as actuator is magnetic hysteresis. However, it can be compensated
with appropriate selection of spring or providing an inverse current. In this proposal, however, the effect
of magnetic hysteresis was neglected.

Fig. 3. The single-board RIO (sb-9642), manufactured by National Instruments, integrated I/O ports, a real-time processor, and a
re-programmable FPGA on a printed circuit board (PCB) [7].

Fig. 4. Electromechanical characteristics and mechanical design of solenoids. While weighted only 97 grams and 3.4 centimeters in
diameter, the solenoid can generate more than 7 kilograms under 10% duty cycle [8].
C. Hardware Design
The concept of hardware design is shown in Fig. 5. The mechanism was designed via SolidWorks
(Dassault Systmes SolidWorks Corp., Waltham, MA, USA) based on the dimensions provided by the
datasheet of solenoids. SolidWorks is 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software that is widely used by
engineers to create 3D models for machine parts.
As shown in Fig. 5, a pair of solenoids was arranged in a bipennate form, with a pennation angle of
o
30 . By having this pennation angle, more solenoids can be placed in the limited space. In this project,
the
o
30 pennation angle was chosen under the consideration of mechanism design, the relation between
pennation angle and overall force output should be optimized in the future. As a result, a pair of solenoid
can create a 5.2 millimeters stroke, since its original stroke was 6 millimeters. The total stroke that the
cellular units can provide can be modified base on different operators. In Fig. 5, three pairs of cellular
units were illustrated, which are able to provide a total of 15.6 millimeters of stroke. The cellular units
were expected to be attached onto a custom made ankle-foot orthosis (AFO). The AFO will be made from
carbon fiber tubing to minimize its weight.

Fig. 5. Hardware design of the system. The cellular units were modeled in SolidWorks based on dimensions provided by the data
sheet. Attached by linkages, a pair of solenoids was arranged in a
o
30 pennation angle, in a bipennate form. The packages were
expected to attach on an ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) to provide additional moment on ankle joint. Image credit of AFO: Carbon
Express LLC [9].
III. EXPECTED OUTCOMES
A. Physical Characteristics of System
In order to find out what the cellular units can contribute to during the push-off phase, the mass and
the moment of inertia of the system should be provided. Once the construction of the system is completed,
the total mass can be easily measured, and the moment of inertia can be measured from experiments. For
the following assessment for system outcome, only symbols and hypothetical data will be used rather than
actual values.
B. Assessment for System Outcome
Considering the additional moment that the system can contribute solely, the free body diagram can
be drawn as in Fig. 6(a). Since pennation angle is
o
30 , the maximum total force, F, which the device can
generate during push-off, can be calculated as equation (2), assuming the solenoids is operating in 10%
duty cycle:
70 cos30 6 363.73 ( )
o
F N (2)
The net moment can be calculated in equation (3):

1 2
- M F d mg d I

(3)
To evaluate the hypothetical outcome of the system, we assigned values for the following parameters:
d
1
= 0.1 m, d
2
= 0.03m, =12 rad/s
2
, I =0.05 kgm
2
, and mg = 24.5 N, then M = 35.04 N-m. For a
person weighed 75 kg, the device can provide 0.47 Nm/kg during push-off, as shown in Fig. 6(b). The
calculation above was based on hypothetical data; however, it can be inferred that the additional torque
the device provides should have the ability to overcome its own kinetic characteristics.
To truly evaluate the performance of the system; the metabolic cost of transport (COT) should be
measured. By measuring the oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production of human breathing
during an assigned task, a measure of how physically taxing the activity for the subject can then be
acquired [10].

Fig. 6. (a) The free-body diagram of the device and (b) the hypothetical outcome assessment. Only the contribution of the device
was evaluated. The outcome was estimated based on hypothetical assumptions. Image credit of the ankle moment graph: Dr. Jim
Richards [11].
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