A Reactive Robotized Interface for Lower Limb Rehabilitation: Clinical Results
This work addresses rehabilitation challenges for patients with cerebellar disease, but it is incremental as it applies existing fuzzy control methods to a specific clinical context.
The paper tackled the problem of postural analysis for sit-to-stand motion in lower limb rehabilitation for cerebellar disease patients, resulting in a fuzzy-based controller that adjusts robotic interface motion based on stability rules derived from force analysis, validated in clinical experiments.
-This article presents clinical results from the use of MONIMAD, a reactive robotized interface for lower limb Rehabilitation of patients suffering from cerebellar disease. The first problem to be addressed is the postural analysis of sit-to-stand motion. Experiments with healthy subjects were performed for this purpose. Analysis of external forces shows that sit-to-stand transfer can be subdivided into several phases: preaccel-eration, acceleration, start rising, rising. Observation of Center of Pressure, ground forces and horizontal components force on handles yields rules to identify the stability of the patient and to adjust the robotic interface motion to the human voluntary movement. These rules are used in a fuzzy-based controller implementation. The controller is validated on experiments with diseased patients in Bellan Hospital.