A CAN-based inertial sensor network for lower limb exoskeleton

The lower limb exoskeleton suit is a wearable device that aims to support the movement of users,and enhance the motion and strength of physical lower limbs. As inertial sensors provide better measurement performance (vs. optical or electromagnetic sensors), a CAN-based inertial sensor network was proposed in this study for an enhancement of the real-time movement detection of the lower limb exoskeleton suit. The microsystem node of the intertial sensor network employs the general structure to obtain the different data from sensors. All requirements of the predefined communication protocols are satisfied towards the designed communication channel. A time division multiplexing algorithm then was introduced to reduce the data conflicts during transmissions. The adaptive Kalman filtering is applied for the solving of attitude. Experimental results show that the CAN bus can well meet the requirements of data transmission of inertial sensors network.