Dynamic Analysis and Control of a Hybrid Serial/Cable Driven Robot for Lower-Limb Rehabilitation

In this work, we propose the use of a hybrid serial/cable driven robot for lower limb rehabilitation of disabled patients. The robot consists of an exoskeleton actuated via cables. A strategies to calculate and keep the values of the tensions in the cables positive during the motion is investigated. We show that the Null Space method yields good results and is less demanding in computational time; hence it is a good choice for real-time implementations. The human walking were simulated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. The simulation results show that the values of the tensions in the cables can be maintained positive during the motion. The presented work shows that this hybrid parallel-serial cable robot could be used for rehabilitation of the lower limb.