A robotic exoskeleton for overground gait rehabilitation

Abstract

Every year, stroke significantly affects thousands of individuals who require rehabilitation to regain lost movements and return to a normal life. Exoskeletons are becoming a very powerful tool to help therapists in this rehabilitation process. This work presents a robotic exoskeleton designed to assist overground gait training for stroke survivors with deficits in gait coordination despite conventional rehabilitation. The device is a bilateral exoskeleton with six degrees of freedom and is designed to implement two control strategies. An adaptive trajectory control has been developed to guide the patient's limb within a desired path, allowing a deviation based on torque of interaction between the user and the exoskeleton. An admittance control strategy allows the robotic platform to capture the user's movements during assistive training and to replicate it during active training. Experimental results show that the exoskeleton can adapt a pre-recorded gait pattern for the gait pattern of a specific user. Future investigations will evaluate the device in the rehabilitation of patients who have suffered from stroke and make a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different robotic therapies.