Design and Compliance Control of Rehabilitation Exoskeleton for Elbow Joint Anchylosis

A rehabilitation exoskeleton is designed for treatment of elbow joint anchyloses. Using the Matland Grading Standards method, a series elastic actuator (SEA)based joint and its compliance controller for rehabilitation training are designed in this paper. A novel torsional spring is designed with a symmetrical structure for a bidirectional load capacity. This spring was embedded in the elbow of the exoskeleton to act as the SEA active joint and then worked as a torque sensor, too. We also designed the torque controller and the compliance controller to meet the requirements of the treatment. Successful implementation of the controller in a rehabilitation exoskeleton robot verified the feasibility and realizability of the device. The experimental validation was performed rigorously and the data from the experiments are presented and analyzed.