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Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing

Biomechanical energy harvesters are designed to generate electrical energy from human locomotion (e.g., walking) with minimal or no additional effort by the users. These harvesters aim to carry out the work of the muscles during phases in locomotion where the muscles are acting as brakes. Currently,...

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Autores principales: Gad, Moran, Lev-Ari, Ben, Shapiro, Amir, Ben-David, Coral, Riemer, Raziel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9581163/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36274915
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.998248
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author Gad, Moran
Lev-Ari, Ben
Shapiro, Amir
Ben-David, Coral
Riemer, Raziel
author_facet Gad, Moran
Lev-Ari, Ben
Shapiro, Amir
Ben-David, Coral
Riemer, Raziel
author_sort Gad, Moran
collection PubMed
description Biomechanical energy harvesters are designed to generate electrical energy from human locomotion (e.g., walking) with minimal or no additional effort by the users. These harvesters aim to carry out the work of the muscles during phases in locomotion where the muscles are acting as brakes. Currently, many harvesters focus on the knee joint during late swing, which is only one of three phases available during the gait cycle. For the device to be successful, there is a need to consider design components such as the motor/generator and the gear ratio. These components influence the amount of electrical energy that could be harvested, metabolic power during harvesting, and more. These various components make it challenging to achieve the optimal design. This paper presents a design of a knee harvester with a direct drive that enables harvesting both in flexion and extension using optimization. Subsequently, two knee devices were built and tested using five different harvesting levels. Results show that the 30% level was the best, harvesting approximately 5 W of electricity and redacting 8 W of metabolic energy compared to walking with the device as a dead weight. Evaluation of the models used in the optimization showed a good match to the system model but less for the metabolic power model. These results could pave the way for an energy harvester that could utilize more of the negative joint power during the gait cycle while reducing metabolic effort.
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spelling pubmed-95811632022-10-20 Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing Gad, Moran Lev-Ari, Ben Shapiro, Amir Ben-David, Coral Riemer, Raziel Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Biomechanical energy harvesters are designed to generate electrical energy from human locomotion (e.g., walking) with minimal or no additional effort by the users. These harvesters aim to carry out the work of the muscles during phases in locomotion where the muscles are acting as brakes. Currently, many harvesters focus on the knee joint during late swing, which is only one of three phases available during the gait cycle. For the device to be successful, there is a need to consider design components such as the motor/generator and the gear ratio. These components influence the amount of electrical energy that could be harvested, metabolic power during harvesting, and more. These various components make it challenging to achieve the optimal design. This paper presents a design of a knee harvester with a direct drive that enables harvesting both in flexion and extension using optimization. Subsequently, two knee devices were built and tested using five different harvesting levels. Results show that the 30% level was the best, harvesting approximately 5 W of electricity and redacting 8 W of metabolic energy compared to walking with the device as a dead weight. Evaluation of the models used in the optimization showed a good match to the system model but less for the metabolic power model. These results could pave the way for an energy harvester that could utilize more of the negative joint power during the gait cycle while reducing metabolic effort. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9581163/ /pubmed/36274915 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.998248 Text en Copyright © 2022 Gad, Lev-Ari, Shapiro, Ben-David and Riemer. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Gad, Moran
Lev-Ari, Ben
Shapiro, Amir
Ben-David, Coral
Riemer, Raziel
Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing
title Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing
title_full Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing
title_fullStr Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing
title_full_unstemmed Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing
title_short Biomechanical knee energy harvester: Design optimization and testing
title_sort biomechanical knee energy harvester: design optimization and testing
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9581163/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36274915
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.998248
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