Soft-Actuator-Based Soft Exoskeleton For The Lower Limb Rehabilitation Of Rats With Spinal Cord Injury

Aiming for building an automated devices or exoskeleton for the lower limb rehabilitation of rats, this paper with a mechanical point of view and novel insight, presents a soft exoskeleton.Firstly, the author investigated the conventional rehabilitation therapies for limbs of human and other beings, the traditional exoskeleton technology and its application for varied rehabilitation purpose, and finally denied the feasibility of its application in this project. Instead, the author proposed a novel conception of using soft actuator to build the exoskeleton. By collecting the biometric information of the rat used in the rehabilitation experiments, the author specified the concrete requirements of this project for the soft actuator. Inspired by the previous works on different actuators, the author developed two distinctive soft actuators, which is totally based on hyper-elastic silicone rubber to ensure its softness. In addition to their fabrication processes, this paper also explains the characterization of the actuators with the results proving their feasibility in this project. Finally, narrowing the functions of the soft exoskeleton down to actuating the thigh of the rats, the author presents the whole rehabilitation system:the exoskeleton and its control. To build the exoskeleton, a multi-DoF orientation structure for fixing the soft actuator in the right position on the rat body, a coupling device for secure the contact and force transfer between the actuator and rats’knee, and a soft actuator are designed and combined. To control the exoskeleton, the author produced a PCB for powering the solenoid valves, chose NI DAQ as the control hardware and designed the control interface based on Lab VIEW. The whole system functions well and the initial experiments on rats turn out satisfying in terms of rehabilitation purpose.