Walking assist for a stroke survivor with a power-assist exoskeleton

Abstract

A power-assist exoskeleton is expected to help the motion of physically weak person in daily living. The power-assist exoskeleton can be applicable to a stroke survivor also, though the motion intention of the paralyzed limb is difficult to be estimated. This paper proposes a control method of the lower-limb power-assist for a stroke survivor. In the proposed method, the lower-limb motion of the abled side of the user is copied as the desired motion of the paralyzed side. Then the desired lower-limb motion of the paralyzed side is generated by the lower-limb power-assist exoskeleton robot. ZMP is taken into account to avoid the unexpected falling. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated by performing the experiments.