Design of a quasi-passive 3 DOFs ankle-foot wearable rehabilitation orthosis.

Muscular rigidity and atrophy caused by long-term underactivity usually lead to foot drop, strephenopodia, foot extorsion or some other complications for the lower limb movement disorders or lower limb surgery sufferers. The ankle-foot orthosis can help patients conduct the right ankle motion mode training, inhibit spasm and prevent ankle complications. In this paper, a quasi-passive 3 DOFs ankle-foot wearable orthosis was designed on the basis of kinematics and dynamics analysis of the ankle joint. Ankle joint trajectory and dynamic characteristics similar to those of natural gait can be obtained by the combination of passive energy storage and additional power complement. In terms of function, the orthosis has shock absorption and low energy consumption. Given its excellent characteristics of comfortableness, lightweight, and anthropomorphic construction, the orthosis can be used in medical institutions for rehabilitation training or as a daily-walking auxiliary equipment for surgery sufferers.

[1]  Reinald Brunner,et al.  Comparison of a dynamic and a hinged ankle-foot orthosis by gait analysis in patients with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. , 2002, Gait & posture.

[2]  Szu-Min Chang,et al.  Biofeedback Controlled Ankle Foot Orthosis for Stroke Rehabilitation to Improve Gait Symmetry , 2006 .

[3]  Futoshi Wada,et al.  Research and development of compact wrist rehabilitation robot system. , 2014, Bio-medical materials and engineering.

[4]  Li Ling.  Effects on ambulation of children with spastic cerebral palsy by different kind of ankle foot orthoses , 2002 .

[5]  Mihaela Baritz,et al.  Assessment of Human Bio-Behavior During Gait Process Using LifeMOD Software , 2010 .

[6]  Jungwon Yoon,et al.  A Novel Reconfigurable Ankle/Foot Rehabilitation Robot , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Daniel P. Ferris,et al.  Mechanical performance of artificial pneumatic muscles to power an ankle-foot orthosis. , 2006, Journal of biomechanics.

[8]  Wen Feng Lu,et al.  Simulating Dynamics of Thoracolumbar Spine Derived from Life MOD under Haptic Forces , 2010 .

[9]  Ingrid G. L. van de Port,et al.  Tolerance and effectiveness of a new dynamic hand-wrist orthosis in chronic stroke patients. , 2013, NeuroRehabilitation.

[10]  Anne M. Moseley,et al.  Impact of Ankle-foot Orthoses on Gait and Leg Muscle Activity in Adults with Hemiplegia , 2003 .

[11]  H. Herr,et al.  Adaptive control of a variable-impedance ankle-foot orthosis to assist drop-foot gait , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.