DEVELOPMENT OF A ROBOTIC EXOSKELETON SYSTEM FOR GAIT REHABILITATION

Abstract

This thesis presents a robotic knee-ankle-foot exoskeleton system aiming at providing overground gait rehabilitation training to sub-acute and chronic stroke patients at home and outpatient setting. The exoskeleton robotic system consists of a knee joint and an ankle joint, which is wearable, lightweight and in modular design. The robotic joint is actuated by a novel series elastic actuator (SEA) which is compliant and force-controllable. A human-robot interaction controller is implemented to accurately and stably control the interactive torque between the robot and human joints. An upper-level control strategy is implemented for overground gait training. In this control strategy, a novel synchronization method is developed to synchronize a reference trajectory to the actual human gait. Experiments on healthy subjects demonstrate that this robot can provide synchronous and effective assistance to the human joints during overground walking, which can improve the altered gait pattern.