Generated torque control method for leg body exercise assistive apparatus

A method of controlling generated torques of respective torque generation means in a leg body exercise assistive apparatus, which includes a pair of leg sections, each to be attached to a different one of a person's legs so as to be movable integrally with the person's legs, with each of the leg sections having:

• a foot orthosis portion for supporting a bottom side of a foot of the person to whom the leg sections are to be attached
• joint regions corresponding to an ankle joint, a knee joint, and a hip joint of each leg of the person to whom the leg sections are to be attached,
• link members for attaching the foot orthosis portion and the joint regions to the person's legs, and
• the torque generation means capable of generating a support torque applied to the joint regions corresponding to the ankle joint, the knee joint, and the hip joint of the person's legs to which the leg sections are to be attached,
• the method comprising:
• a moment estimation step comprising:
• sequentially estimating person-side joint moments when the person wearing the leg body exercise assistive apparatus is moving the person's legs, which includes as components thereof moments to be generated at least in the knee joint, the hip joint, and the ankle joint of each leg, on the assumption that the person is making almost the same motion as the motion of the legs with the leg body exercise assistive apparatus removed from the person, and
• sequentially estimating apparatus-side joint moments, which includes as components thereof moments to be generated in the joint regions of the leg body exercise assistive apparatus corresponding to the knee joint, the hip joint, and the ankle joint of each leg, respectively, on the assumption that the leg body exercise assistive apparatus is independently making almost the same motion as the motion of the person's legs without being attached to the person;
• and
• a torque control step comprising controlling the torque generation means so as to generate a support torque, which is obtained by adding a torque determined according to the estimated value of the person-side joint moment corresponding to the joint region concerned to a respective reference torque, on the assumption that the estimated value of the apparatus-side joint moment of each joint region corresponding to each of the ankle joint, the knee joint, and the hip joint is the reference torque to be generated by the torque generation means corresponding to the joint region concerned.