Development of Dual-arm Lower Limb Rehabilitation Robot for Hemiplegic Patients

Abstract

The incidence of stroke in the middle-aged and elderly population is high, and it will lead to different degrees of hemiplegia, which will make the patient’s exercise capacity decline and affect their lif e. The lower limbs are the central support part of the human body, and stroke survivors need rehabilitation training to restore their athletic ability. However, traditional rehabilitation training limits the rehabilitation effect of patients due to some shortcomings such as one to one treatment, long rehabilitation cycles, and so on. As an auxiliary means of innovation, the application of rehabilitation robot -assisted training has broad prospects. In this paper, we propose a dual-arm lower limb rehabilitation robot (DLLRR) that can simulate the skill of the therapist to improve the rehabilitation effect of the patient. Firstly, the mechanism of the robot is designed based on the patient’s needs. Then, the kinematics model of the DLLRR is built, and the workspace is calculated in MATLAB. Furthermore, the hardware control system of the DLLRR is constructed, and the cooperative control strategy of the robot arms is introduced. The speed response experiments verify the superior dynamic performance of robotic joints, and the position control experiment and walking experiment show that the DLLRR has good tracking performance and can help the subject to carry out rehabilitation training. These results provide evidence for the feasibility of the designed robot.