Design and Evaluation of the LOPES Exoskeleton Robot for Interactive Gait Rehabilitation

 13 years. What became of it? With no public database of all stroke research and protocols easy questions like this will never be answered. Aren't you glad of all the incompetency in stroke? It means your children and grandchildren will experience the same shitworthy rehab you did and not recover either.

Design and Evaluation of the LOPES Exoskeleton Robot for Interactive Gait Rehabilitation

 

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Author(s)

Jan F. Veneman ; Rik Kruidhof ; Edsko E. G. Hekman ; Ralf Ekkelenkamp ; Edwin H. F. Van Asseldonk ; Herman van der Kooij

All Authors

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Abstract

Document Sections

• I.
  Introduction
• II.
  Design Criteria
• III.
  Prototype Design
• IV.
  Evaluation of Performance
• V.
  Discussion

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Abstract:

This paper introduces a newly developed gait rehabilitation device. The device, called LOPES, combines a freely translatable and 2-D-actuated pelvis segment with a leg exoskeleton containing three actuated rotational joints: two at the hip and one at the knee. The joints are impedance controlled to allow bidirectional mechanical interaction between the robot and the training subject. Evaluation measurements show that the device allows both a "patient-in-charge" and "robot-in-charge" mode, in which the robot is controlled either to follow or to guide a patient, respectively. Electromyography (EMG) measurements (one subject) on eight important leg muscles, show that free walking in the device strongly resembles free treadmill walking; an indication that the device can offer task-specific gait training. The possibilities and limitations to using the device as gait measurement tool are also shown at the moment position measurements are not accurate enough for inverse-dynamical gait analysis.