A New 4-DOF Robot for Rehabilitation of Knee and Ankle-Foot Complex: Simulation and Experiment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel stationary 4-DOF robot designed for knee and ankle-foot rehabilitation, demonstrating its effectiveness through simulation and experiments with healthy subjects.

Contribution

A new stationary rehab robot with all necessary DOFs for knee and ankle-foot joints, addressing limitations of existing trainers.

Findings

System functions naturally in simulation and experiments.

Meets requirements for effective rehab training.

Improves natural joint motion during therapy.

Abstract

Stationary robotic trainers are lower limb rehab robots which often incorporate an exoskeleton attached to a stationary base. The issue observed in the stationery trainers for simultaneous knee and ankle-foot complex joints is that they restrict the natural motion of ankle-foot in the rehab trainings due to the insufficient Degrees of Freedom (DOFs) of these trainers. A new stationary knee-ankle-foot rehab robot with all necessary DOFs is developed here. A typical rehab training is first implemented in simulation, and then tested on a healthy subject. Results show that the proposed system functions naturally and meets the requirements of the desired rehab training.