Abstract
We designed and manufactured a pneumatic-driven robotic passive gait training system (PRPGTS), providing the functions of body-weight support, postural support, and gait orthosis for patients who suffer from weakened lower limbs. The PRPGTS was designed as a soft-joint gait training rehabilitation system. The soft joints provide passive safety for patients. The PRPGTS features three subsystems: a pneumatic body weight support system, a pneumatic postural support system, and a pneumatic gait orthosis system. The dynamic behavior of these three subsystems are all involved in the PRPGTS, causing an extremely complicated dynamic behavior; therefore, this paper applies five individual interval type-2 fuzzy sliding controllers (IT2FSC) to compensate for the system uncertainties and disturbances in the PRGTS. The IT2FSCs can provide accurate and correct positional trajectories under passive safety protection. The feasibility of weight reduction and gait training with the PRPGTS using the IT2FSCs is demonstrated with a healthy person, and the experimental results show that the PRPGTS is stable and provides a high-trajectory tracking performance.
Highlights
Walking is an important function for human beings to maintain quality of life
The subject tested on the pneumatic-driven robotic passive gait training system (PRPGTS) was a 172 cm tall and 68 kg healthy male, and the interval type-2 fuzzy sliding pulse-width modulation controllers and the interval type-2 fuzzy sliding controllers (IT2FSC) were developed in the LabVIEW environment and implemented in the FPGA-based embedded system to allow a real-time control
We manufactured a prototype of the pneumatic-driven passive robotic gait training system (PPRGTS) for patients who suffer from weakened lower limbs and designed two types of IT2FSC to overcome system uncertainties and external loading
Summary
Walking is an important function for human beings to maintain quality of life. Many diseases, such as stroke, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis, can restrict our independent mobility. A patient needs more than one physiotherapist to perform physical treatments, because the physiotherapists have to support the patient to prevent the knee from buckling during standing, provide additional momentum to maintain the leg’s smooth swing, evaluate correctness of gait movement, and land feet carefully and simultaneously. An integrated rehabilitation system containing a treadmill, a low-limb exoskeleton, and a body-weight support system can provide continuous passive motion and reduce therapists’ workload [3,4]
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