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Personal care robots
Published in Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Robots, Healthcare, and the Law, 2019
Prostheses are implantable devices that are considered medical devices. If used in rehabilitation, actuated orthotic devices (among others, exoskeletons) are also going to be regarded as medical devices. The FDA defines a powered exoskeleton as “a prescription device that is composed of an external, powered, motorized orthosis used for medical purposes that are placed over a person’s paralyzed or weakened limbs to provide ambulation.” ISO 13485:2013, in line with the Council Directive 93/42/EEC of 14 June 1993 concerning medical devices, defines medical devices as “any instrument […] to be used, alone or in combination, for human beings for one or more of the specific purpose(s) of: diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, treatment or alleviation of disease […].” If the exoskeleton aims to enhance patients’ sanity, and their intended use is rehabilitative, the regulation of a medical device should apply (FDA regulation for the United States).
Simulated muscle activity in locomotion: implications of co-occurrence between effort minimisation and gait modularity for robot-assisted rehabilitation therapy
Published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 2021
Marco Maddalena, Mozafar Saadat
Regarding locomotion, it is supposed that there exist four motor modules which account for most part of muscle activity during gait cycle and are related to the different phases: weight acceptance, propulsion, leg flexion and leg deceleration (Lacquaniti et al. 2012; Ting et al. 2015). These considerations form a promising tool for providing assistance during locomotion and for analysing the impairment of neurologically affected individuals. For example, incapacitated subjects can be enabled to walk independently as motor modules coordinate the input provided by functional electrical stimulation to lower limb paralysed muscles with the mobilising action supplied by a powered exoskeleton (Alibeji et al. 2018a, 2018b; Moore-Clingenpeel et al. 2018).
Towards Neuro-Fuzzy Compensated PID Control of Lower Extremity Exoskeleton System for Passive Gait Rehabilitation
Published in IETE Journal of Research, 2023
Jyotindra Narayan, Santosha Kumar Dwivedy
From the last one and a half decades, various robotic aided lower extremity exoskeleton devices (LEEDs) have been developed to achieve active and passive therapeutic measures [8–10]. Conventionally, LEEDs are classified into three categories based on the application: assistive [10–12], rehabilitation [13–16], and strength augmentation devices [17]. Mohan et al. [10] introduced a passive exoskeleton ANKUR-LL II with a RRR configuration, which is augmented to a vertical manipulator having a parallel arrangement of 2PRP-2PPR. This lower extremity exoskeleton system is specifically designed to assist the patients in the sagittal plane. Cestari et al. [11] presented an assessment of the compliant actuation system in ATLAS exoskeleton to assist the children during flexion/extension of hip and knee joints. The ankle’s dorsiflexion/plantarflexion movement is delivered via an attached link between the shank and thigh. For the preliminary investigation, a dummy having inertial and mass properties of 10 years human child was utilized to test the exoskeleton system. In another study on assistive exoskeleton devices with active hip, knee and ankle joints, Biomimetic compliant lower extremity exoskeleton robot (BioComEx) has been proposed where a variable stiffness actuator drives the ankle joint, and series elastic actuators (SEAs) drive the knee joint as well as hip joint [12]. Active Leg Exoskeleton (ALEX) [13], as a rehabilitation device, is developed with linear actuators affixed with hip and knee joints. The desired force fields on the moving leg are applied using a force-field controller. For safety purposes, ALEX was tested with a dummy leg having geometrical and inertial parameters similar to the human leg. For rehabilitation purposes, LOKOMAT [14] was introduced with the subject cooperative strategy to avoid repetitive work by the physiotherapists for a long time. Lower Limb Powered Exoskeleton (LOPES) [15], as a treadmill-mounted robotic exoskeleton, has been developed with the active hip joint for the rehabilitation of lower extremity. Long et al. [16] proposed a lower extremity exoskeleton device where the knee joint is actuated active-wise, and other ones are actuated using elastic elements. In another work on strength augmentation, Human Power Augmentation Lower Exoskeleton (HUALEX) device [17] is designed with ten DOFs (revolute joint type) where two active joints are actuated with an arrangement of a double-link pendulum. A two-linkage revolute mechanism is employed to keep the arrangement parallel to the human thigh and shank.