Predictive Control of Peak Achilles Tendon Force in a Simulated System of the Human Ankle Joint with a Parallel Artificial Actuator during Hopping

Latest advances in wearable exoskeletons for the human lower extremity predominantly focus on minimising metabolic cost of walking. However, there currently is no robotic exoskeleton that gains control on the mechanics of biological tissues such as biological muscles or series-elastic tendons. Achieving robotic control of biological tissue mechanics would enable prevention of musculoskeletal injuries or the personalization of rehabilitation treatments following injury with levels of precisions not attained before. In this paper, we introduce a new framework that uses nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) for the closed-loop control of peak tendon force in a simulated system of the human ankle joint with parallel exoskeletal actuation. We propose a computationally efficient NMPC’s inner model consisting of explicit, closed-form equations of muscle-tendon dynamics along with those of the ankle joint with parallel actuation. The proposed formulation is tested and verified on movement data collected during dynamic ankle dorsiflexion/plantarflexion rotations executed on a dynamometer as well as during walking and running on a treadmill. The framework designed using the NMPC controller showed a promising performance in keeping the Achilles tendon force under a predefined threshold. Results indicated that our proposed model was generalizable to different muscles and gaits and suitable for real-time applications due to its low computational time.