On the Design of Kalman Observers for Back-Support Exoskeletons

This paper presents the synthesis of a Kalman state observer for an industrial back-support exoskeleton. The design of a state observer always should be based on a model providing an adequate description of the system dynamics; however, when back-support exoskeletons are considered, the synthesis of a state observer becomes very challenging, since only nonlinear models may be adopted to reproduce the system dynamic response with adequate accuracy. In this work, the possibility of employing a Kalman state observer together with a suitable linear model is investigated. Simulated results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach when it is applied to the synthesis of a state observer for a back-support exoskeleton.