A review of design mechanisms used for knee rehabilitation devices

Abstract

The need for robotic rehabilitation devices has increased significantly over the last few decades. With the rise in cases of stroke, neurological disorders, accidents, spinal injuries, paralysis etc., leading to impairment in the functioning of limbs the need for such rehabilitation devices has also risen. To cope with this many developments have been made to make physical therapy more effective, cost efficient and convenient. Since manual therapy alone is time consuming and requires constant attention from the therapist thus, to cope with the increase in patient to therapist ratio, robotic rehabilitation devices are being widely used. The purpose of this paper is to review the developments in design of rehabilitation devices for the human knee. It focuses on the synthesis process and analysis of the mechanisms used nowadays. It also discusses the limitations of the existing designs and the scope for improvement. The paper also sheds light upon different optimization methods used to increase the precision of design.