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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The successful motor rehabilitation of stroke, traumatic brain/spinal cord/sport injured patients requires a highly intensive and task-specific therapy based approach. Significant budget, time and logistic constraints limits a direct hand-to-hand therapy app-roach, so that intelligent assistive machines may offer a solution to promote motor recovery and obtain a better understanding of human motor control. This paper will address the development of a lower limb exo-skeleton legs for force augmentation and active assistive walking training. The twin wearable legs are po-wered by Pneumatic Muscle Actuators (pMAs), an experimental low mass high power to weight and volume ac-tuation system. In addition, the pMA being pneumatic produces a more natural muscle like contact and as such can be considered a soft and biomimetic actuation system. This capacity to “replicate” the function of natural muscle and inherent safety is extremely important when working in close proximity to humans.The in-tegration of the components sections and testing of the performance will also be considered to show how the structure and actuators can be combined to produce the various systems needed for a highly flexible/low weight clinically viable rehabilitation exoskeleton.

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Two medical engineering projects will be presented that are in the field of motor rehabilitation after stroke. The first project focuses on the restitution of hand and finger movements. The concept is the generation of proprioceptive afferent input by position controlled muscle stimulation. As innovative stimulation method the Repetitive Peripheral Magnetic Stimulation (RPMS) is used. Secondly, a novel control method (Complementary Limb Motion Estimation, CLME) for automated treadmill training for hemiparetic patients is presented. CLME deduces reference motion for the impaired limbs based on the contra-lateral leg. This method aims to increase the patient’s involvement and dominance during rehabilitation, while the robot acts as an assistive slave.

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