Review of Key Technologies for Developing Personalized Lower Limb Rehabilitative Exoskeleton Robots

Rehabilitative training and assistance to daily living activities play critical roles in improving the life quality of lower limb dyskinesia patients and older people with motor function degeneration. Lower limb rehabilitative exoskeleton has a promising application prospect in support of the above population. In this paper, critical technologies for developing lower limb rehabilitative exoskeleton for individualized user needs are identified and reviewed, including exoskeleton hardware modularisation, bionic compliant driving, individualized gait planning and individual-oriented motion intention recognition. Inspired by the idea of servitization, potentials in exoskeleton product-service system design and its enabling technologies are then discussed. It is suggested that future research will focus on exoskeleton technology and exoskeleton-based service development oriented to an individual’s physical features and personalized requirements to realize better human-exoskeleton coordination in terms of technology, as well as accessible and high-quality rehabilitation and living assistance in terms of utility. © 2022, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.