A spherical parallel three degrees-of-freedom robot for ankle-foot neuro-rehabilitation.
The ankle represents a fairly complex bone structure, resulting in kinematics that hinders a flawless robot-assisted recovery of foot motility in impaired subjects. The paper proposes a novel device for ankle-foot neuro-rehabilitation based on a mechatronic redesign of the remarkable Agile Eye spherical robot on the basis of clinical requisites. The kinematic design allows the positioning of the ankle articular center close to the machine rotation center with valuable benefits in term of therapy functions. The prototype, named PKAnkle, Parallel Kinematic machine for Ankle rehabilitation, provides a 6-axes load cell for the measure of subject interaction forces/torques, and it integrates a commercial EMG-acquisition system. Robot control provides active and passive therapeutic exercises.
CNR-National Research Council, Institute of Industrial Technologies and Automation, via Bassini 15, Milan, Italy. matteo.malosio@itia.cnr.it
Matteo
M
Malosio
Simone Pio
SP
Negri
Nicola
N
Pedrocchi
Federico
F
Vicentini
Marco
M
Caimmi
Lorenzo
L
Molinari Tosatti
D000842:Ankle; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004576:Electromyography; D004867:Equipment Design; D005528:Foot; D006801:Humans; D012046:Rehabilitation / Q000379:methods*; D012371:Robotics