Abstract:

Exoskeletons are mechatronic devices used to increase human muscle strength and resistance. In the last decade these devices have become a very useful tool to assist active kinesiotherapy. This paper presents the design of exoskeleton focused on the rehabilitation of ankle and knee for the right leg. The construction of prototype like Exoskeleton for Lower Limb Training with Instrumented Orthoses (ELLTIO) using Series Elastic Actuator (SEA) to reduce the effort in the human joints, and a control law to perform a rehabilitation routine using an adaptive control scheme were first implemented in simulation to verify the control strategy and make a real rehabilitation test. The adaptive control law is proposed with the intention that the exoskeleton can adapt to user parameters at the time when performing the exercise. The results show the parameters estimation and tracking trajectory for the exoskeleton were proposed, and this trajectory could be a routine rehabilitation proposed by the therapist.

Key words: exoskeleton, parametric identification, rehabilitation robotics, adaptive control