Design on mechanism of lower limb rehabilitation robot based on new body weight support (BWS) system

Abstract

As a result of impairments, a majority of stroke or spinal cord injury (SCI) patients have significant functional limitations during recovery, including the inability to walk. Evidences demonstrate that patients can regain the ability to walk through lower limb rehabilitation. Over the last two decades, there has been growing development of robotic devices to assist the rehabilitation of ambulation inpatients following stroke or SCI. A lower limb rehabilitation robot based on a new BWS system is presented in this paper, which designed to help inpatients following stroke or SCI regain walking ability. This lower limb rehabilitation robot includes four main modules: Pelvic-supported active BWS system, Powered exoskeleton, Walker and Treadmill. Further more, the powered exoskeleton has eight degrees of freedom, which meet all basis conditions when body is doing a natural gait. And the pelvic-supported active BWS system can not only reduce the overall volume of the rehabilitation robot and reduce the restraint of patient's upper torso, but also provide a stable, variable supporting force.