State of the Art Technologies for Exoskeleton Human Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Robots

Sk Khairul Hasan,Anoop Kumar Dhingra

doi:10.3844/jmrsp.2020.211.235

Abstract

The World Health Organization reports that about 1 billion people worldwide have some form of disability. Of these, 110-190 million people have significant difficulties in functioning. Providing rehabilitation services to a large number of disabled people with limited resources is quite challenging. Robot-based neurorehabilitation is an appealing solution for providing rehabilitation services without the downside of provider fatigue. Despite the importance of robot-based rehabilitation, a limited number of resources are readily available related to the technical challenges that need to be addressed in designing human lower extremity rehabilitation robots? This paper tries to fill up the technical gaps by explaining lower extremity anatomy, probable causes of lower extremity disability, rehabilitation protocols and fundamental safety and ergonomic features that need to be considered during the design/selection of an exoskeleton robot. A comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art sensing and actuation technologies involved in human lower extremity exoskeleton robots is also presented to familiarize the reader with current technologies. It is hoped that a comprehensive coverage of all relevant anatomical, anthropometric, actuation and sensing aspects of lower extremity exoskeleton robots will help the designer come up with the best possible solution for a specific application.

Highlights

Physical disability is defined as a physical state that influences a person’s mobility, physical capacity, endurance, or dexterity
This paper focuses on Human Lower Extremity (HLE) robotic rehabilitation which has been an area of active research during the last two decades
Even though the review articles mentioned above summarize the state-of-the-art for HLE robots, it is seen that a majority of these articles have focused on an overall description of the robot, mechanism and control strategies, application and commercial aspects. Design considerations for these robots which are based on HLE anatomy, training methods and the state-ofthe-art in sensing and actuation technologies have received limited attention in these works. To overcome these gaps in the literature, this review article addresses probable causes of HLE disability, rehabilitation protocol, lower extremity anatomy and basic safety and ergonomic design requirements that need to be considered during design/selection of an exoskeleton robot

Summary

Introduction

Physical disability is defined as a physical state that influences a person’s mobility, physical capacity, endurance, or dexterity. It is a severe socio-economic problem in the world. Approximately 15% of the total population is considered as physically disabled. Many people experience a temporary or permanent lower or upper limb impairment sometime in their lifetime. Exoskeleton robot-based exercises are a practical approach for neurorehabilitation. Exoskeleton robots offer an array of possibilities in human upper and lower extremity rehabilitation by providing customizable physiotherapy and evaluating performance during all stages of recovery

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