Active Power Assist with Equivalent Force on Connection for Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robots
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsOverall, the manuscript provides a clear and concise overview of the study's background, methods, results, and conclusions, adhering to the structured of the journal format and providing an objective representation of the article. The contributions are clearly summarized in the Introduction.
Major issue is replicability aspect. As such, information regarding the robot dimensions, inertial parameters, and description of the control units should be provided. Note that the paper should report all necessary information so that another researcher can replicate the study is the material and methods are available. Also this information could help comparing other proposal with yours.
Please comment on the limitations faced in the study. This can be summarized in conclusion, and can offer potential avenues for other researchers to tackle these limitations in future works.
Please comment on the potential future works in the concluding section.
Minor comments:
Definitive article ("the") can be omitted at the beginning of figures captions (Figure 1 for example).
Define omega (w) after equation 4
Figure 2 caption was trunked. Please complete the text in the caption.
The box in Figure 3 and Figure 7 are challenging to visualize. Please consider modifying the figure to increase the size of the boxes in the Simulink flow chart.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We are truly grateful to yours and other reviewers’ critical comments and thoughtful suggestions concerning our manuscript ID actuators-3015837 entitled “Active Power-Assist with Equivalent Force on Connection for Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robots”. We appreciate the time and effort that editors and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. These comments are very valuable and helpful for improving the quality of our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. we have carefully addressed the reviewers’ concerns and revised the manuscript accordingly which we hope meet with approval. The modifications have been highlighted in red in the revised version. The detailed point-to-point responses are listed below.
Overall, the manuscript provides a clear and concise overview of the study's background, methods, results, and conclusions, adhering to the structured of the journal format and providing an objective representation of the article. The contributions are clearly summarized in the Introduction.
Major issue is replicability aspect. As such, information regarding the robot dimensions, inertial parameters, and description of the control units should be provided. Note that the paper should report all necessary information so that another researcher can replicate the study is the material and methods are available. Also this information could help comparing other proposal with yours.
Response: Thank you for your feedback. The detailed information of the exoskeleton robot have been included in the previous work in reference [27]. For clarity and conciseness, the structural design details, including actuators and sensors, of the exoskeleton robot are described in reference [27].
Please comment on the limitations faced in the study. This can be summarized in conclusion, and can offer potential avenues for other researchers to tackle these limitations in future works.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. The limitations of this work have been added in the conclusion section.
Please comment on the potential future works in the concluding section.
Minor comments:
Definitive article ("the") can be omitted at the beginning of figures captions (Figure 1 for example).
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. I have removed the definitive article ("the") from the captions of Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9.
Define omega (w) after equation 4
Response: Thank you for your feedback. After equation 4, omega (ω) is defined as follows:
ω denotes the angular velocity of the corresponding joint.
Figure 2 caption was trunked. Please complete the text in the caption.
Response: Thank you for pointing that out. The caption for Figure 2 was truncated. Here is the completed text for the caption:
Figure 2. Influence of the MTPC active power-assist on the human joint power. (a) Without assistance; (b) With assistance by exoskeleton robot.
The box in Figure 3 and Figure 7 are challenging to visualize. Please consider modifying the figure to increase the size of the boxes in the Simulink flow chart.
Response: Thank you for your feedback. Figures 3 and 7 are enlarged to address the issue with visualizing the boxes in the figures. This adjustment should help improve clarity and make the details easier to read.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe present paper deals with an innovative method to control an active power-assisted lower limb exoskeleton robot.
Subject is very interesting and theme is actual.
After a state of the art analysis, authors describe the MTPC assistance method and their proposal named EFOC method. There follow the description of the experimental tests and the consequent discussion. The potential directions for future activities are finally presented.
Paper is interesting and well designed.
I suggest the following improvement:
1. It lacks a kinematic / structural scheme (it could be given near Fig.10) of the exoskeleton architecture. You sholud answer to the following questions: what is the kinematic skeme? How many degrees of freedom has the mechanism? What are the mechanical constraints ? Are there, in kinematic chains, non-rigid elements ?
2. Figure 3 and Figure 7 are difficult to be understood in an easy way, both for their graphic size and as they are placed on different pages to easily compare the methods. They should be arranged in a different way with a more exhaustive comparison directly given in captions. Cite the software you used to create the model. Simulink ?
3. It would be interesting to briefly define the characteristics of the instrumentation used for experimental tests (for example the bandwidth) and the sampling time for signal acquisition.
4. Please, have a look at the following paper which can be useful to complete the state of the art in Chapter 1.
Tiboni, M., Borboni, A., Vérité, F., Bregoli, C., Amici, C.
Sensors and Actuation Technologies in Exoskeletons: A Review
(2022) Sensors, 22 (3), art. no. 884, .
Borboni, A., Villafañe, J.H., Mullè, C., Valdes, K., Faglia, R., Taveggia, G., Negrini, S.
Robot-Assisted Rehabilitation of Hand Paralysis After Stroke Reduces Wrist Edema and Pain: A Prospective Clinical Trial
(2017) Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 40 (1), pp. 21-30.
No comment about English language.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We are truly grateful to yours and other reviewers’ critical comments and thoughtful suggestions concerning our manuscript ID actuators-3015837 entitled “Active Power-Assist with Equivalent Force on Connection for Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robots”. We appreciate the time and effort that editors and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. These comments are very valuable and helpful for improving the quality of our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. we have carefully addressed the reviewers’ concerns and revised the manuscript accordingly which we hope meet with approval. The modifications have been highlighted in red in the revised version. The detailed point-to-point responses are listed below.
- It lacks a kinematic / structural scheme (it could be given near Fig.10) of the exoskeleton architecture. You sholud answer to the following questions: what is the kinematic skeme? How many degrees of freedom has the mechanism? What are the mechanical constraints ? Are there, in kinematic chains, non-rigid elements ?
Response: Thank you for your feedback. The configuration of the exoskeleton robot has been added to Figure 10. The kinematic scheme of the exoskeleton robot includes both active and passive degrees of freedom, providing a detailed layout of their distribution. For clarity and conciseness, the structural design details of the exoskeleton robot are described in reference [27].
- Figure 3 and Figure 7 are difficult to be understood in an easy way, both for their graphic size and as they are placed on different pages to easily compare the methods. They should be arranged in a different way with a more exhaustive comparison directly given in captions. Cite the software you used to create the model. Simulink ?
Response: Thank you for your feedback. Figures 3 and 7 are enlarged to address the issue with visualizing the boxes in the figures. The software has been cited as follows:
The 3D model was imported into Matlab's Simscape for multi-body dynamics simulation [24].
- It would be interesting to briefly define the characteristics of the instrumentation used for experimental tests (for example the bandwidth) and the sampling time for signal acquisition.
Response: Thank you for your feedback. ‘The control loop and sensor signal acquisition are both at 1kHz’ has been added.
- Please, have a look at the following paper which can be useful to complete the state of the art in Chapter 1.
Tiboni, M., Borboni, A., Vérité, F., Bregoli, C., Amici, C. Sensors and Actuation Technologies in Exoskeletons: A Review (2022) Sensors, 22 (3), 884.
Borboni, A., Villafañe, J.H., Mullè, C., Valdes, K., Faglia, R., Taveggia, G., Negrini, S. Robot-Assisted Rehabilitation of Hand Paralysis After Stroke Reduces Wrist Edema and Pain: A Prospective Clinical Trial (2017) Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 40 (1), pp. 21-30.
Response: Thank you for the suggestion. I have included the following references to complete the state of the art in Chapter 1.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAccept as it is.
