Designing robotic devices to assist or emulate the ankle is challenging due to the joint’s complexity and the fundamental role in walking. T-FLEX is an ankle exoskeleton based on vsa for rehabilitation and assistance of people with ankle dysfunctions. This device has presented promising motor recovery results for a stroke patient during a rehabilitation program. However, human walking applications require an electromechanical characterization to measure the device’s capabilities and determine the suitable configuration that responds to this complex task. This work presents T-FLEX’s experimental characterization carried out in a test bench structure. The results showed alterations in system times and actuators’ bandwidth because of the tendons’ force levels. Furthermore, this study determined the most appropriate T-FLEX configuration to obtain the best performance. Thus, this work also presents a preliminary validation under that configuration on a healthy subject in gait assistance to assess the device’s response in different velocities and measure the effects on the user. In conclusion, T-FLEX can assist the human gait for gait cycle duration greater than 0.74 s providing torque on the ankle of up to 12 Nm in propulsion and 20 Nm in dorsiflexion. Nevertheless, it should include an adaptable stage in the control architecture to counteract the stabilization time for providing the maximum torque at the right time.

由于关节的复杂性和步行中的基本作用，设计机器人设备来辅助或模拟脚踝具有挑战性。T-FLEX 是一款基于vsa的脚踝外骨骼用于踝关节功能障碍患者的康复和援助。该设备在康复计划期间为中风患者提供了有希望的运动恢复结果。然而，人类步行应用需要机电特性来测量设备的功能并确定响应这一复杂任务的合适配置。这项工作展示了 T-FLEX 在测试台结构中进行的实验表征。结果表明，由于肌腱的力水平，系统时间和执行器带宽发生了变化。此外，这项研究确定了最合适的 T-FLEX 配置以获得最佳性能。因此，这项工作还提供了在该配置下对健康受试者进行步态辅助的初步验证，以评估设备在不同速度下的响应并测量对用户的影响。总之，T-FLEX 可以在大于 0.74 秒的步态周期持续时间内辅助人类步态，在脚踝上提供高达 12 Nm 的推进扭矩和 20 Nm 的背屈扭矩。然而，它应该在控制架构中包括一个适应性阶段，以抵消稳定时间，以便在正确的时间提供最大扭矩。