Analysis and synthesis of ankle motion and rehabilitation robots

Abstract

The ankle represents one of the most complex bone structures in human body and the overall ankle motion is therefore complicate. In addition, motion analysis of ankle is a key issue in ankle rehabilitation and in developing an ankle rehabilitation device. Based on the analysis of the structure of ankle and its motion, this paper proposed two types of motion modes of ankle, according to the modes, two different kinds of rehabilitation robots are proposed respectively. Then the mechanical design, the kinematics and workspace analysis are derived for the proposed rehabilitation robots. Fig. 1 Left: bones of the ankle and sub talar joint, and parts of the lateral ankle ligaments. Right: X-ray image of ankle and talar joints [3]978-1-4244-4775-6/09/$25.00

Lower-Limb Robotic Rehabilitation: Literature Review and Challenges

“…Neurological impairment after stroke can lead to reduced or no muscle activity around the ankle and knee causing the inability of an individual to lift their foot (drop foot). Ankle motion is very complicated due to its complex bone structures [50]. The overall motions of the ankle can be arranged as dorsiflexion/plantarflexion, inversion/eversion, abduction/adduction, and pronation/supination.…”

“…Cheng Kung [63] --Univ. Fuzhou [50] --AIST Tsukuba [64] -- ankle and knee motions without walking. The patient is positioned always in the same place, and only the target limb is exercised (Figure 1(d)).…”

“…The Man-Machine Systems Laboratory (MML) at the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has developed a robot for assisting rehabilitation of patients with ankle dysfunction [63], and the School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation at the University of Fuzhou has performed an in-depth motion analysis of the ankle and has proposed two different kinds of rehabilitation robots [50]. The AIST of Tsukuba has developed a robotic device for ankle dorsiflexion/plantarflexion that can be applied to patients with complicated ankle joint deformity [64].…”

Modelado y Control de un Exoesqueleto para la Rehabilitación de Extremidad Inferior con dos grados de libertad

“…El movimiento del tobillo es muy complicado debido a sus estructurasóseas complejas (Sui et al, 2009). Muchos sistemas se han desarrollado para ejercitar o restaurar estos movimientos del tobillo y la rodilla.…”

Development of lower-limb rehabilitation exercises using 3-PRS Parallel Robot and Dynamic Movement Primitives

“…Many applications of robotics for rehabilitation can be found in (Xie, 2016), and lower limb rehabilitation devices are discussed in (Díaz et al, 2011). This subfield includes gait trainers (Hesse & Uhlenbrock, 2000;Reinkensmeyer et al, 2006) and ankle rehabilitation (Dai et al, 2004;Liu et al, 2006;Sui et al, 2009).…”