Intelligent Control of an Active Orthosis for Treatment of Gait Disorders

Abstract

Patients of stroke or spinal cord injuries (SCI) need to undergo a lot of newlinephysical therapy for them to regain proper motion in their limbs. During the past newlinethree decades the world has witnessed the introduction of several robotic gait newlineexoskeletons and gait orthoses which can be used to enhance the usual methods of newlinephysical therapy. The initial control strategies that were used in rehabilitation robots newlinewere adapted from the strategies that were applied to industrial robots but were newlinefound to be ineffective so research engineers designed various other control newlinestrategies specifically for rehabilitation robots among which, assist-as-needed newline(AAN) control is most popular. The basic concept of AAN training strategies is newlinebased on motor learning principles and clinical studies. A comprehensive review of newlinevarious robotic gait rehabilitation devices and the recent developments in newlinemechanism design, actuation and control have been dealt with. Besides, robotic newlinedevices used for treadmill training, over ground training the control strategies newlineapplied as well as Assist-as-Needed (AAN) gait training strategies, experimental newlineprocedures and clinical evaluations of various control strategies used and the newlinemechanism designs of these robotic orthoses have also been dealt with in detail. newline