Abstract: Ankle injury is one of the most common joint diseases that people experience during exercise. Most people have suffered ankle injuries at least once in their lives. The studies have shown that the ankle joint provides the most power and torques during the act of walking, compared to the knee and hip joints. This paper presents an ankle joint exoskeleton device, which is mainly used to provide assistance and protection to the human ankle joint with a pneumatic assist drive during walking. The pneumatic pressure smart shoes for this ankle exoskeleton were designed for detecting the human gaits to control the exoskeleton with certain supporting forces to the ankle joints at the appropriate timing. Each smart shoe has two sensors placed in between the wearable layer and the sole. The changes of the foot pressures were measured by the sensors for a microcontroller to control the exoskeleton. Two sets of experimental tests which were 2-month trials and gait selection were used to test the shoes. The experiments of 2-month trials were made to evaluate the stability of the shoes. The results showed that the shoes had no damages, no air leakage, and no malfunctions after the trials. The trials of gait selection were made to test the recognition rate which reached at 99.9% for the shoe system. The results showed that the design of the pneumatic smart shoes for the ankle-assisted exoskeleton met the requirements.

Key words: Exoskeleton , · Pneumatic pressure sensor , · Gait detection , · Ankle joint , · Bionic