A Design and Control Methodology for
Hum an Exoskeletons. This thesis presents a control scheme called Sensitivity Amplification Control that enables an exoskeleton to support a payload and shadow the movement of the wearer in an intuitive and unobtrusive manner. The control algorithm developed here increases the Closed-loop system sensitivity to its wearer’s forces and torques without any measurement from the wearer. This strategy requires an accurate dynamic model of the system but does not require direct measurements from the human. The trade-off between not having sensors to measure human action and the sacrificed robustness due to model parameter variation is described. A modification to the controller is also explored that partially circumvents this limitation.