A new global model to characterise the dynamics of a pneumatic proportional-pressure valve for a biomechatronic application (original) (raw)
Related papers
WARD: a pneumatic system for body weight relief in gait rehabilitation
IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, 2000
The paper presents Walking Assistance and Rehabilitation Device (WARD), a system for walking rehabilitation devised to relieve the patient of his/her body weight of a constant and prescribed amount by externally supporting the subject at the upper trunk and pelvis level by means of a harness. The system is based on a pneumatic actuator that has proved to be effective at maintaining a constant relief force. The constancy of this force that should be maintained even under high body weight support (BWS) conditions (70-80% of body weight) seems to be important for a correct motor pattern. A law has been identified that may be useful to adjust walking speed as a function of the prescribed BWS. WARD is simple to construct, practical to use, and has been characterized on healthy subjects.
2019
Lower limb exoskeletons are wearable robotic devices which either augment human power or facilitate a walking ability for those who lost it by injury or aging. They have been getting more and more attention in the scientific community thanks to its increasing functionality and availability. Today, several devices are being utilized by people themselves or rehabilitation centers. Except the fixed gait training systems, these devices are anthropomorphic mechanical structures which actuated by electric motors, hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders. However, another actuation system so-called pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) promises great advantages over its antecedents. It's more compliant, lighter and more powerful. Due to it being a newer system, one can encounter with it in a few devices and these are either fixed or poorly investigated. This study, along with its mechanical design choices, gives a deeper insight on usage of PAMs in a lower limb exoskeleton. First, the mechanical s...
It is a general assumption that pneumatic muscle-type actuators will play an important role in the development of an assistive rehabilitation robotics system. In the last decade, the development of a pneumatic muscle actuated lower-limb leg orthosis has been rather slow compared to other types of actuated leg orthoses that use AC motors, DC motors, pneumatic cylinders, linear actuators, series elastic actuators (SEA) and brushless servomotors. However, recent years have shown that the interest in this field has grown exponentially, mainly due to the demand for a more compliant and interactive human-robotics system. This paper presents a survey of existing lower-limb leg orthoses for rehabilitation, which implement pneumatic muscle-type actuators, such as McKibben artificial muscles, rubbertuators, air muscles, pneumatic artificial muscles (PAM) or pneumatic muscle actuators (PMA). It reviews all the currently existing lower-limb rehabilitation orthosis systems in terms of comparison and evaluation of the design, as well as the control scheme and strategy, with the aim of clarifying the current and ongoing research in the lower-limb robotic rehabilitation field.