Concept and Prototype Design of A Robotic Ankle-foot Rehabilitation System with Passive Mechanism for Coupling Motion

Abstract

Coupling behavior exists in ankle joint motion. When human beings preform dorsiflexion or plantarflexion actively, there will exist inversion and internal rotation at the same time. Existing ankle-foot rehabilitation robots did not consider these coupling motions, not only one degree of freedom (dorsiflexion/plantar flexion) robot, but also multi-degrees of freedom robots. In this paper, we proposed a robotic ankle-foot rehabilitation system with passive mechanism, to compensate the coupling motions. It might make joint motion more natural and comfortable during the robotic rehabilitation training. We also test the feasibility of the proposed prototype, and verify all DOFs and their range of motions.