Application of a parallel robot in lower limb rehabilitation: A brief capability study

Abstract

Robotic rehabilitation has a significant potential to reduce the clinical labor costs of physiotherapy. Robotic therapy allows patients to have more in-depth repetitive movements while the therapists evaluate the progress of the recovery. This paper investigates the potential of a 6 degrees of freedom parallel robot, designed and built at the University of Birmingham, for use in robotic rehabilitation of stroke patients. The foot trajectories of eight post-stroke patients were recorded and analyzed in a gait laboratory. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been designed, which enables the physiotherapist to select the desired exercise from a dedicated database. Three different rehabilitation exercises were investigated: hip flexion/extension, ankle dorsiflexion /plantarflexion, and marching. The results show that the robot was able to repeat all of these foot trajectories successfully, while being able to lift 200kg load in its dynamic mode. This suggests that the robot has the capability to successfully deliver lower limb rehabilitation exercises.