Development Of Leg-joint Rehabilitation Training Device Driven By Pneumatic Muscle Actuator

Limbs-joints rehabilitation training device is a kind of equipment used to help handicapped to complete various rehabilitation exercises. Its performance directly affects the effect of rehabilitation exercises. Now, the limbs-joints rehabilitation training devices researched by domestic and abroad researchers mostly use motor or pneumatic cylinder to drive patient's joints movements. Although the positions of the movements could be accurately controlled, it is easy to scathe patient's joint because they are not complaisant and yielding. Pneumatic muscle actuator is a new-style driver. Not only is it safe,complaisant and yielding, but also it outputs more power at the same weights. Moreover, it has similar characteristic of power/length with biologic muscle. So the limbs-joints rehabilitation device driven by pneumatic muscle actuator accords more for human physiological characteristic. But, the researches on limbs-joints rehabilitation device driven by pneumatic muscle actuator was focus on arms or hands. The legs-joints rehabilitation device was rarely studied and reported. At the same time, the handicapped are mostly disabled with their legs. So, it is important to develop the legs-joints rehabilitation device driven by pneumatic muscle actuator. The purpose of this thesis is to develop the legs-joints rehabilitation device, perform experimental research on its performance, and offers certain reference for performing the further study of pneumatic muscle's application in legs-joints rehabilitation device field.First, the requirements of mechanical system and control system of legs-joints rehabilitation device is put forward based on the joint rehabilitation training theory. The holistic design scheme is determined.And then, the mechanical systerm hardware control system and software system are designed according to the requirements. The design of mechanical system mainly includes the selection of pneumatic muscle and the design of other mechanical configuration. The design of hardware control system mainly includes the design of pneumatic control circuit and electrical control circuit, and the selection of relevant pneumatic elements,sensors. The design of software control system is mainly to develop the control programme to realize the control of the rehabilitation training of legs-joints rehabilitation device by means of Labview.On the developed device, some experimental research on the control characteristics,isokinetic CPM characteristics and isokinetic ARM characteristics of knee-joint were performed. The results verified that the device is capable of actuating the different human legs to complete the exercises of isokinetic CPM and isokinetic ARM, the velocity and angle range of motion is adjustable, the resistance of motion varies with the contraction force of patient's agonistic muscles, and it is adaptive, yielding and adjustable.