TY - JOUR
T1 - Novel Design of a Rotation Center Auto-Matched Ankle Rehabilitation Exoskeleton with Decoupled Control Capacity
AU - Wang, Tun
AU - Olivoni, Enea
AU - Spyrakos-Papastavridis, Emmanouil
AU - O'Connor, Rory J.
AU - Dai, Jian S.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the United Kingdom under Grant No. EP/S019790/1 and China Scholarship Council (CSC).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 International Union of Crystallography. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/5/1
Y1 - 2022/5/1
N2 - This article presents a novel ankle rehabilitation exoskeleton for poststroke patients, the rotational center of which can automatically conform to each individual user's ankle complex, once they wear the exoskeleton; this property always holds regardless of the point at which the exoskeleton is attached to the human shank. This exoskeleton has 2 rotation degree-of-freedoms (DOFs) and is able to provide 2 different rotation patterns via reconfiguration. In the combined-rotation pattern arrangement, the mechanism can generate all three kinds of rotations that the ankle complex is naturally capable of realizing. Among these rotational motions, the adduction/abduction rotation is a coupled motion. This rotation can be further reduced, or eliminated, by minimizing the distance between the lower connection points of the actuated links and the human ankle complex, and vice versa. For the other rotation pattern, a 90-degree arrangement of the side link offers decoupled motion control of the mechanism. Numerical studies reveal that the required rehabilitation workspace for dynamical gait exercises can be achieved with high dexterity, without generating singularities. Further investigations indicate that this mechanism has great potential for rehabilitating poststroke patients of a wide range of heights and weights.
AB - This article presents a novel ankle rehabilitation exoskeleton for poststroke patients, the rotational center of which can automatically conform to each individual user's ankle complex, once they wear the exoskeleton; this property always holds regardless of the point at which the exoskeleton is attached to the human shank. This exoskeleton has 2 rotation degree-of-freedoms (DOFs) and is able to provide 2 different rotation patterns via reconfiguration. In the combined-rotation pattern arrangement, the mechanism can generate all three kinds of rotations that the ankle complex is naturally capable of realizing. Among these rotational motions, the adduction/abduction rotation is a coupled motion. This rotation can be further reduced, or eliminated, by minimizing the distance between the lower connection points of the actuated links and the human ankle complex, and vice versa. For the other rotation pattern, a 90-degree arrangement of the side link offers decoupled motion control of the mechanism. Numerical studies reveal that the required rehabilitation workspace for dynamical gait exercises can be achieved with high dexterity, without generating singularities. Further investigations indicate that this mechanism has great potential for rehabilitating poststroke patients of a wide range of heights and weights.
KW - ankle rehabilitation exoskeleton
KW - computer-aided design
KW - conceptual design
KW - decoupled motion control
KW - dynamical gait exercises
KW - parallel robots
KW - robot design
KW - robot kinematics
KW - simulation-based design
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85120996602&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1115/1.4052842
DO - 10.1115/1.4052842
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85120996602
SN - 1050-0472
VL - 144
JO - Journal of Mechanical Design, Transactions of the ASME
JF - Journal of Mechanical Design, Transactions of the ASME
IS - 5
M1 - 053301
ER -