A common issue with many commercial rehabilitative exoskeletons and orthoses are that they can be prohibitively expensive for an average individual to afford without additional financial support. Due to this a user may have limited to the usage of such devices within set rehabilitation sessions as opposed to a continual usage. The purpose of this review is therefore to find which actuator implementations would be most suitable for a simplistic, low-cost powered orthoses capable of assisting those with pathologic gait disorders by collating literature from Web of Science, Scopus, and Grey Literature. In this systematic review paper 127 papers were selected from these databases via the PRISMA guidelines, with the financial costs of 25 actuators discovered with 11 distinct actuator groups identified. The review paper will consider a variety of actuator implementations used in existing lower-limb exoskeletons that are specifically designed for the purpose of rehabilitating or aiding those with conditions inhibiting natural movement abilities, such as electric motors, hydraulics, pneumatics, cable-driven actuators, and compliant actuators. Key attributes such as technical simplicity, financial cost, power efficiency, size limitations, accuracy, and reliability are compared for all actuator groups. Statistical findings show that rotary electric motors (which are the most common actuator type within collated literature) and compliant actuators (such as elastic and springs) would be the most suitable actuators for a low-cost implementation. From these results, a possible actuator design will be proposed making use of both rotary electric motors and compliant actuators.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.