State of the Art Technologies for Exoskeleton Human Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Robots

The World Health Organization reports that about 1 billion people worldwide have some form of disability. Of these, 110-190 million people have significant difficulties in functioning. Providing rehabilitation services to a large number of disabled people with limited resources is quite challenging. Robot-based neurorehabilitation is an appealing solution for providing rehabilitation services without the downside of provider fatigue. Despite the importance of robot-based rehabilitation, a limited number of resources are readily available related to the technical challenges that need to be addressed in designing human lower extremity rehabilitation robots? This paper tries to fill up the technical gaps by explaining lower extremity anatomy, probable causes of lower extremity disability, rehabilitation protocols and fundamental safety and ergonomic features that need to be considered during the design/selection of an exoskeleton robot. A comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art sensing and actuation technologies involved in human lower extremity exoskeleton robots is also presented to familiarize the reader with current technologies. It is hoped that a comprehensive coverage of all relevant anatomical, anthropometric, actuation and sensing aspects of lower extremity exoskeleton robots will help the designer come up with the best possible solution for a specific application.