AN REHABILITATION ROBOT DRIVEN BY PNEUMATIC ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES

Abstract

Rehabilitation robots are playing an important role in restoring movement ability of hemiplegic patients. However, most of these robots adopt motors as actuators. Considering human body is a flexible organism, rigid motors lack compliance when getting in touch with patients. This paper designs an ankle rehabilitation robot by employing pneumatic muscle actuators which are soft and have similar compliance with biological muscles. Analysis of motion characteristics of human ankle is performed, and relationship between angle and torque of human ankle acquired from experiment is studied. Driving mechanism using pneumatic muscle actuators is addressed carefully and ankle-rehabilitation robot is designed. Then, dynamics of the robot is established and structure optimization of the driving mechanism is performed. Consequently, prototype is manufactured and assembled.