A passive swingassistive planar external orthosis

Authors: A Mokhtarian A Fattah S K Agrawal

Publish Date: 2014/02/26

Volume: 37, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-10

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Abstract

Orthoses are devices used for rehabilitation of the patients having muscle weakness at their limbs People with motorincomplete motion can train their weak limbs using appropriate orthoses to improve their muscle activity and walking performance In this paper we propose a lower leg planar external passive orthosis to assist the patients with lower leg disabilities during swing phase of gait on treadmill This orthosis attaches to the shank of the leg and its other end is connected to a walking frame In this work we optimize the physical and geometrical parameters of external orthosis together with the parameters of two torsional springs located at its joints or two linear springs connected to its links to obtain a desired swing motion of the leg without existence of any actuators or making any effort by the user Applying kinematic constraints of the closedloop system consisting of the human leg and the external orthosis in addition to dynamic equations of motion optimization process is accomplished using Genetic Algorithm approach through computer simulation The simulation results show that the actual trajectories of hip and knee joint angles of the leg are very close to the desired ones during swing phase of gait on treadmill

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