Control of an assistive device for disabled lower limb people

Abstract

Lower limb disabilities severely affect mobility and quality of life. Biomedical engineering, especially through prostheses and exoskeletons controlled by EMG signals, offers promising solutions. This study focuses on the control of a knee orthopedic device based on PID and variant controllers, modeled in SolidWorks 2021 and Matlab/Simulink 2024b, considering biomechanical, mechanical and electrical aspects. PID, PI, and P control strategies are applied, together with an anti-windup mechanism to deal with saturation in the actuator, and an adaptive MRAC control. The performance of the different controllers is evaluated using the IAE index, highlighting that the best performance is obtained by the classic PID controller with anti-windup and MRAC with PID. analysis highlights the need for customized and efficient real-time solutions. Future research should address improved control, adaptability and computational feasibility in real environments, exploring technologies such as machine learning or neural networks. These developments are essential to improve the autonomy and safety of people with knee disabilities.