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

Robotic gait rehabilitation faces manychallenges regarding ankle assistance, body weight supportand physical human-robot interaction.

This paper reports onthe development of a gait rehabilitation exoskeleton prototypeintended as a platform for the evaluation of design and controlconcepts in view of improved physical human-robotinteraction.

The performance of proxy-based sliding modecontrol as a "robot-in-charge" control strategy is evaluatedboth in simulation and in experiments on a test setup.

Compared to PID control, test results indicate good trackingperformance and in particular safe system behavior.