Beyl, Pieter ; Cherelle, Pierre ; Versluys, Rino ; Vanderniepen, Innes ; Lefeber, Dirk
Proceedings of the 8th National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Research in robotic gait rehabilitation still faces many challenges regarding ankle assistance, body weight support and human-robot interaction.
This paper reports on the development, focusing on these challenges, of a gait rehabilitation exoskeleton powered by pleated pneumatic artificial muscles. The first prototype is intended as a platform for the evaluation of design and control concepts.
The mechanical design procedure is explained with the emphasis on optimization. A proxy-based sliding mode control approach is proposed and evaluated by means of simulation.
Simulation results indicate good tracking performance and safe system behavior, encouraging experimental validation on the prototype.
