On a Robotic Application for Rehabilitation Systems Dedicated to Kids Affected by Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

The rehabilitation of neurological pathologies has known considerable progress in recent years. This paper is concerned with the field of health and specifically with the assistance of kids having difficulties to move. The main objective is the design and the realisation of a robotic system intended for the assistance of kids with cerebral palsy. The lokomat system appears to be the most suitable system for kids' rehabilitation. Exoskeletons are the core of this robotic system. The purpose of this paper is to develop PID controllers for the exoskeleton's control based on the feedback linearization approach. Despite that the feedback linearization approach is not robust against paramater variations, we propose to use it to control the robot system. In fact, usually the real system doesn't present parameter variations, but it is subject to external perturbations. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the PID controller in the presence of external perturbations Provided by kids.