Study And Realization Of The Training Control System Of A Rehabilitation Exoskeleton Orthosis For Lower Limbs

Exoskeleton is a special type of wearable actuation system that performs with high accuracy, fast response, and "tireless". It is likely to avoid the drawbacks of the traditional body weight supported treadmill training for the lower limbs gait rehabilitation after stroke when the exoskeleton is introduced in. It will help to train the patients as well as record the training data, and also it will free the doctors from the heavy physical work and make them possible to have more time to focus on the superior work such as rehabilitation training evaluation and making recovery plans. Therefore, the quality and efficiency of the lower limb rehabilitation training will be high increased, and so is the chance of full recovery. The new type of rehabilitation exoskeleton orthosis for lower limbs, the subject of this study, is a topical mechatronics system used in this area.Control system hardware structure is developed for the rehabilitation exoskeleton orthosis with PC and DC servo motor controller, base on which virtual instrument control interface is created to make the control tasks much easier and more flexible comparing with the traditional entities one. The established patient training database will greatly help the therapists assess the rehabilitation, make training plan and even deep study the theory of stroke rehabilitation by recording and storing the real time data while gait trainings are carried on. Two sets of gait training control strategies, passive and semi-active, are explored to meet the different requirements of the different rehabilitation periods which will lead to the increase of the rehabilitation efficiency and more chances to get full recovery for the stroke patients. Besides, because of the accomplishment of designing the new mechanical structure with the features of light, comfortable and reliable, the brand-new body weight supported treadmill training involving a lower limb exoskeleton will give the patients totally new experiences. Finally, a prototype system of the lower limb rehabilitation exoskeleton orthosis is established and a series of lower limb gait rehabilitation simulation training experiments are carried out which demonstrate the functionality of the exoskeleton system and the feasibility of the gait training control strategies.The successful establishing of the rehabilitation exoskeleton orthosis for lower limbs provides a reliable experiment platform for the deep study in this field, and lays the theory and practicing foundation on the ultimate goal of the system industrialization.