Abstract
We developed a walking-assistance robot for walking rehabilitation and assessed the kinematic characteristics of a prototype. The walking-assistance robot is composed of hip, knee, and ankle joints, and each joint is driven by a motor with a decelerator. The equations of angular displacement while walking were derived by theoretically analyzing human locomotion, and the calculated angular displacements were then applied to the robot controller. The output angular displacement of each joint was measured and compared with its input angular displacement in walking experiments on a treadmill at various walking speeds and strides. The differences between the input and output angular displacements are 5.22% for the hip and 2.97% for the knee joints, and it has been confirmed that the walking-assistance robot works well.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 503-515 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers, A |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2011 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded by the BMBF within the project "GECKO" (grant number 03SF0454C). S. Holdcroft would like to thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for funding and 4D Labs for the use of its facilities. The authors would like to thank D. Gerteisen and R. Hanke-Rauschenbach for valuable discussions and A. Hartmann for the assistance in sample fabrication.
Keywords
- Joint
- Kinematics
- Rehabilitation
- Walk-assistive robot