While a large number of robotic exoskeletons have been designed by research teams for rehabilitation, it remains rather difficult to analyse their ability to finely interact with a human limb: no performance indicators or general methodology to characterize this capacity really exist. This is particularly regretful at a time when robotics are becoming a recognized rehabilitation method and when complex problems such as 3-D movement rehabilitation and joint rotation coordination are being addressed. The aim of this paper is to propose a general methodology to evaluate, through a reduced set of simple indicators, the ability of an exoskeleton to interact finely and in a controlled way with a human. The method involves measurement and recording of positions and forces during 3-D point to point tasks. It is applied to a 4 degrees-of-freedom limb exoskeleton by way of example.

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Safety is a critical issue for upper arm exoskeletons intended for human use. Joint forces and moments experienced by a human user during motion must be minimized to ensure safety. Trajectory planning and control of cable-driven exoskeletons is challenging due to the unique property that cables can transmit forces only in tension. This paper introduces the design of a 4-DOF cable-driven upper arm exoskeleton and schemes for trajectory planning and control. Simulations show that in most cases a feasible point-to-point trajectory can be generated while minimizing reaction joint forces and moments.

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Research in robotic gait rehabilitation still faces many challenges regarding ankle assistance, body weight support and human-robot interaction. This paper reports on the development, focusing on these challenges, of a gait rehabilitation exoskeleton powered by pleated pneumatic artificial muscles. The first prototype is intended as a platform for the evaluation of design and control concepts. The mechanical design procedure is explained with the emphasis on optimization. A proxy-based sliding mode control approach is proposed and evaluated by means of simulation. Simulation results indicate good tracking performance and safe system behavior, encouraging experimental validation on the prototype.

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The paper presents an exoskeleton system designed for elbow joint motion rehabilitation. The proposed system is supposed to be directly attached to the lateral side of a patient’s arm and assist the elbow flexion-extension motion of the patient for rehabilitation. In the proposed system, the amount of electromyogram (EMG) signals of biceps and triceps of the patient are monitored and used to control the motion of the system. The assist level (the support level) of the system can be decided for each patient based on his/her physical and physiological condition or rehabilitation phase. The effectiveness of the proposed support system was evaluated by experiment.

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In recent years, robotic technologies have been applied to build assistive robots, such as robotic exoskeletons and rehabilitation robots. Based on the clinical considerations, new trends of rehabilitation, like over-ground rehabilitation robots and home-based mobile rehabilitation robots, have emerged by combining both the knowledge from the exoskeleton and the rehabilitation robots. In this article, we review some of the important assistive and rehabilitation robots, in terms of their hardware, actuation, sensory and controls systems. The paper ends with a discussion on the future trends of the rehabilitation robots, especially on clinical-based considerations.

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