Design, Modeling and Fabrication of an Active External Orthosis for Rehabilitation of Lower of Peolple with Disability

Today, with advancements of engineering sciences in the medical field, the use of robotic rehabilitation systems for treating motor disabilities has been widely considered. There are some robotic systems for mechanical rehabilitation and revival of motion pattern of stroke patients. In this research, the main purpose is to designing a new robotic system with one degree of freedom (DOF) to move lower legs of patient without any physiotherapist’s help during rehabilitation. For presented model of system, an optimal kinematic design according to the normal pattern of human motion has been performed. Also, the equations of motion for rehabilitation system have been extracted and the minimum torque of the actuator of the mechanism with solution of inverse dynamic problem has been obtained. In next step, the prototype of orthosis is fabricated and its function is tested on a healthy subject. The experiments show that the proposed device provides optimum simulated motion for the user. In addition, the results of test of heart beat indicate a significant reduction in heart rate and energy consumption of user during using orthosis system comparing to normal motion (without device).