Active and Progressive Exoskeleton Rehabilitation Using Multisource Information Fusion From EMG and Force-Position EPP

Abstract

Although exoskeletons have received enormous attention and have been widely used in gait training and walking assistance in recent years, few reports addressed their application during early poststroke rehabilitation. This paper presents a healthcare technology for active and progressive early rehabilitation using multisource information fusion from surface electromyography and force-position extended physiological proprioception. The active-compliance control based on interaction force between patient and exoskeleton is applied to accelerate the recovery of the neuromuscular function, whereby progressive treatment through timely evaluation contributes to an effective and appropriate physical rehabilitation. Moreover, a clinic-oriented rehabilitation system, wherein a lower extremity exoskeleton with active compliance is mounted on a standing bed, is designed to ensure comfortable and secure rehabilitation according to the structure and control requirements. Preliminary experiments and clinical trial demonstrate valuable information on the feasibility, safety, and effectiveness of the progressive exoskeleton-assisted training.

An EMG-based force prediction and control approach for robot-assisted lower limb rehabilitation

“…The mean absolute value (MAV) of force data during this period is utilized as the training data. It is calculated according to (2).…”

“…With the tendency of aging society, there is a considerable increase in the needs of health care and rehabilitation, especially among elderly and disabled people [1]. The healing training with a proper robot assistance and scientific method will play a significant role in recovering and improving of limb motor function [2]. Rehabilitation and assistive robots, which can provide the patients with proper training and exercise modes and strategies, have been recognized as a promising solution to this problem.…”

“…Another problem is that many works of force/torque estimation have been done on exoskeleton robots (e.g. [2] [8] [11]), while few can be found on end-effector robots. But, the end-effector robot is a very important type of rehabilitation and assistive devices.…”

“…For example, Fan and Yin predicted the human motion intention and achieved the active joint torque by a linear form integrating the moment arm and muscle contraction [2]. Hussain estimated the degree of subject activity walking by calculating the Euclidian distance between the measured torque and each of the generated torque profile [12].…”

Motor Modeling and Optimization of a Back Actuated Lower Extremity Exoskeleton for Stair Gait Cycles

“…This project focuses specifically on designing and building a high efficiency lower extremity exoskeleton capable of enhancing the walking and load carrying abilities of a human operator. Traditional exoskeleton systems can achieve these load carrying goals, but generally, do not have the range to operate for more than a few hours away from an external power source [6][7][8][9][10]. This exoskeleton design will attempt to provide the similar load carrying capabilities of previous systems without requiring the operator to recharge the system during a typical shift (ex.…”