Design and Analysis of a Smart Rehabilitation Walker With Passive Pelvic Mechanism

Abstract

In response to the ever-increasing demand of community-based rehabilitation, a novel smart rehab walker iReGo is designed to facilitate the lower limb rehabilitation training based on motion intention recognition. The proposed walker provides a number of passive degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) to the pelvis that are used to smooth the hip rotations in such a way that the natural gait is not significantly affected, meanwhile, three actuated DoFs are actively controlled to assist patients with mobility disabilities. The walker first identifies the user’s motion intention from the interaction forces in both left and right sides of the pelvis and then uses the kinematic model to generate appropriate driving velocities to support the body weight and improve mobility. In this paper, workspace, dexterity, and the force field of the walker are analyzed based on the system Jacobian. Simulation and experiments with healthy subjects are carried out to verify the effectiveness and tip-over stability. These results demonstrate that the walker has sufficient workspace for pelvic motions, satisfactory dexterity, and near-linear force feedback within the prescribed workspace, and that the walker is easily controlled to ensure normal gait.