Recent technological advances made necessary the use of the robots in various types of applications. Currently, the traditional robot-like scenarios dedicated to industrial applications with repetitive tasks, were replaced by applications which require human interaction. The main field of such applications concerns the rehabilitation and aid of elderly persons. In this study, we present a state-of-the-art of the main research advances in lower limbs actuated orthosis/wearable robots in the literature. This will include a review on researches covering full limb exoskeletons, lower limb exoskeletons and particularly the knee joint orthosis. Rehabilitation using treadmill based device and use of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) are also investigated. We discuss finally the challenges not yet solved such as issues related to portability, energy consumption, social constraints and high costs of these devices.

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The aim of this study is to assess the feasibility of an approach for generating velocity-dependent trajectories to train neurologically injured patients. The reference trajectories are constructed based on the gait patterns of subjects walking on a treadmill. By extracting key events (parameters) from these trajectories, the velocity dependency of the parameters is determined by regression analysis. Then, splines are fitted through these points to obtain gait patterns (position, velocity and acceleration) for specific walking velocities. Considering the severely injured patients, a feedforward controller is used in addition to the impedance controller. The approach is implemented on the LOPES gait rehabilitation robot and evaluated on healthy subjects. Results indicate that the subjects can walk naturally in the robot with the constructed reference trajectories. Further improvements to the technical design and additional testing of healthy and impaired subjects are required to show whether this approach can be transferred to clinical domain.

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For gait rehabilitation robots, an important question is how to ensure stable gait, while avoiding any interaction forces between robot and human in case the patient walks correctly. To achieve this, the definition of ldquocorrectrdquo gait needs to adapted both to the individual patient and to the situation. Recently, we proposed a method for online trajectory generation that can be applied for hemiparetic subjects. Desired states for one (disabled) leg are generated online based on the movements of the other (sound) leg. An instantaneous mapping between legs is performed by exploiting physiological interjoint couplings. This way, the patient generates the reference motion for the affected leg autonomously. The approach, called Complementary Limb Motion Estimation (CLME), is implemented on the LOPES gait rehabilitation robot and evaluated with healthy subjects in two different experiments. In a previously described study, subjects walk only with one leg, while the robot’s other leg acts as a fake prosthesis, to simulate complete loss of function in one leg. This study showed that CLME ensures stable gait. In a second study, to be presented in this paper, healthy subjects walk with both their own legs to assess the interference with self-determined walking. Evaluation criteria are: Power delivered to the joints by the robot, electromyography (EMG) distortions, and kinematic distortions, all compared to zero torque control, which is the baseline of minimum achievable interference. Results indicate that interference of the robot is lower with CLME than with a fixed reference trajectory, mainly in terms of lowered exchanged power and less alteration of EMG. This implies that subjects can walk more naturally with CLME, and they are assisted less by the robot when it is not needed. Future studies with patients are yet to show whether these properties of CLME transfer to the clinical domain.

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In this paper, a dynamic model of the hand of a power-assistive machinery is derived in pursuit of deriving a full-body model. The viscous friction coefficient and the coulomb friction force are identified from experimental data, and it is confirmed that the dynamic model is appropriate via simulation.

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This study presents several measures aimed at mathematically quantifying characteristics associated with human performance and wearable robot platform; there will be trials for improving the kinematic performance of the proposed wearable robot system through the optimization methodology. Within constrained conditions, optimal link lengths will be defined for its objectives and purposes. In particular, parameters from these studies and experiments, is one way of improving its performance of function-orient human robot corporative system; they are used for quantifying the feeling of putting on platform and flexibility, too.

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