Design of an Exoskeleton Robot for Lower-Body Rehabilitation

This paper presents a design of an exoskeleton robot to aid in lower-body rehabilitation of patients who have trouble with walking. The robot is intended for people who suffered from spinal cord injuries, brain trauma, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke. Specifically, a robot for rehabilitation can aid therapists and patients by letting the robot lead the walking pattern of the patient. ErgoFellow, SoliWorks, and MATLAB were the software used to design and simulate the robot. Linear stress analysis was done to determine the response of the parts and assemblies to different types of forces. The stress analysis gave the result of Von Mises stress which helped determine the forces the robot can withstand. Model-based design work flow was done to simulate and visualize the movement of the robot. Through this simulation, the visualization of how the robot will move in a real walking platform was effectively visualized.