A rehabilitation robot for continuous passive motion of foot inversion-eversion

Continuous passive motion (CPM) is a treatment used to prevent stiffness of a joint caused by injury or surgery. Applying this method by rehabilitation robots improves the accuracy of the motion in addition to the length of the training. In addition, ankle is an important joint which has to stand the body weight and tolerate large forces during daily activities and exercise. In this paper, a rehabilitation robot is designed and fabricated with three generalized coordinates to make foot inversion-eversion (I/E). To test the device, CPM is then implemented on the I/E motion of the ankle. The results show that the robot can move the joint in the desired path accurately.