In 2003, 700,000 persons in the United States suffer-ed a cerebral vascular accident (CVA), or stroke, with the total number of survivors estimated at 5.5 mil-lion. The total cost for rehabilitation and lost revenue in 2006 was 57.9 billion (Thom, Haase et al. 2006 ). Stroke commonly causes significant residual physical, cognitive, and psychological impairment (Gre-sham 1990). As the geriatric population increases and more effective therapies for acute stroke management emerge, there will be more survivors living with disabilities. In addition to greater numbers of survi-vors, there has been an increase in the number of more moderately affected survivors (Wolf, D’Agostino et al. 1992), which has increased the demand for stroke rehabilitation in an era of health care cost contain-ment. Efforts to prevent stroke must, therefore, be balanced with pragmatic efforts to prevent disability and maximize quality of life for stroke survivors. Persons with hemiparesis following stroke constitute the largest group of patients receiving rehabilitation services in this country. The current consensus re-garding rehabilitation of patients with some voluntary control over movements of the paretic limb is that they be encouraged to use the limb in functional tasks and receive training directed toward improving strength and motor control, relearning sensorimotor relationships, and improving functional performance (Gresham, Alexander et al. 1997). Given such recommendations, the research community has responded with ef-forts to improve the effectiveness of rehabilitative treatment of motor disability resulting from stroke.

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This paper introduces a control scheme and algorithm for a powered orthosis. Recognizing the intended motion is based on real-time evaluation of EMG signals recorded from the operator’s leg muscles. The desired motion is executed with a torque controller for an electric linear actuator. In contrast to most of the previous approaches for similar applications, this is performed without pattern clas-sification and without a dynamic biomechanical model ofthe human body.

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Individuals with proximal weakness of the lower extremity are often prescribed knee-ankle-foot orthoses (KAFOs), also known as long-leg braces, to compensate for severe weakness of the lower limb muscles. More than 1.5 million people in the United States have partial or complete paralysis of the extremities. 1 Prevalence of paralysis increases with age, and it is not surprising that the mobility of individuals with neuromuscular disorders is one of the most common and complicated issues treated by rehabilitation professionals. Many of these individuals require assistive technology (AT) in the form of an orthosis to enhance mobility. 2 It is important to note that although there is a greater need for assistive technology as age increases, the use of AT actually decreases with age. 3 This usage with age is due, in part, to consumer rejection of KAFO designs.

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The work of fitting ceiling boards is one of the hardest in carpentry, as it requires large muscular power. Hence there is a need to develop assisting apparatus for such work. In order to use this apparatus anywhere a wearable robot is the most suitable. As the robot must be autonomous and lightweight a design requiring low power is proposed. A semi-active control method has been developed using springs, that requires low energy but satisfies the requirements of compliance and assis-tive force. In this paper several aspects of design, control and experiments of the developed prototype is explained. The experimental results prove that the robot reduces the muscular fatigue of carpentry worker by providing suitable assistive force.

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The optimization problem for robot engineering systems according to the criterion of minimum consumed work is one of the important and complicated problems in robotics. Difficul-ties of this problem are caused by multi-parametrization, large number of degrees of freedom of the system, high order and bulkiness of differential equations systems, non-smoothness functional of energy consumption, etc. In spite of a large number of works, which deal with this problem, there still arise many important questions in design of systems with practically important types of drives. These demands stimulate new approaches and solutions. From the point of view of consumed energy, walking robots need more energy than wheeled platforms. Consequently, walking robots require larger electric motors and larger sources of energy. Most of walking robots are autonomous devices, in which duration of functioning is determined both by the capacity of the onboard power supply and the speed of consumption of energy. Therefore, search of theoretically achievable estimations of energy consumption from the point of view of choice of optimum laws of control and development of appropriate mathematical models and software are very urgent.

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