A proof-of-concept exoskeleton for robot-assisted rehabilitation of gait

Robotic gait rehabilitation faces many challenges regarding ankle assistance, body weight support and physical human-robot interaction.

This paper reports on the development of a gait rehabilitation exoskeleton prototype intended as a platform for the evaluation of design and control concepts in view of improved physical human-robot interaction.

The performance of proxy-based sliding mode control as a “robot-in-charge” control strategy is evaluated both in simulation and in experiments on a test setup. Compared to PID control, test results indicate good tracking performance and in particular safe system behavior.