This chapter presents a medical robot exoskeleton developed to assist spinal cord injury patients to walk independently, focusing on real-time gait planning. The exoskeleton robot is built with actuators at the hip and knee joints, and a pair of crutches to help paraplegic patients maintain balance during walking. A real-time gait planning strategy is developed to allow the users to walk stably in a natural manner. This gait planning treats the human-machine coupling system as a quadruped robot and adjusts and corrects gait before each step according to real-time responses of multiple sensors. Taking into account of the kinematic model of people wielding crutches, this gait planning strategy provides a larger stability margin for the system. Results of experiments are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed gait planning method.

Chapter Contents:

• Abstract
• 9.1 Introduction
• 9.2 SIAT lower limb exoskeleton robot
• 9.2.1 System and structure
• 9.2.2 Kinematics modeling
• 9.3 Crutches-walking gait analysis
• 9.4 Real-time gait planning
• 9.4.1 Gait planning strategy
• 9.4.2 Joint servo system
• 9.4.3 Control software
• 9.5 Experiments and discussion
• 9.6 Conclusions
• References

Inspec keywords: injuries; robot dynamics; patient rehabilitation; legged locomotion; stability; handicapped aids; gait analysis; robot kinematics; medical robotics

Other keywords: kinematic model; gait planning method; hip; quadruped robot; stability margin; paraplegic patients; walking; spinal cord injury patients; knee joints; real-time gait planning strategy; medical robot exoskeleton; human-machine coupling system; real-time responses; lower limb exoskeleton robot; sensors

Subjects: Mobile robots; Stability in control theory; Robot and manipulator mechanics; Biological and medical control systems; Spatial variables control