Conceptual design of ankle rehabilitation robot for cerebral palsy patients

Physical therapy can assist patients with gait abnormalities and improve their walking skills significantly. Cerebral palsy (CP) patients are one of these patient groups. For CP patients, involuntary and abrupt muscle and joint contractions are the most common cause of gait abnormalities. Recent studies have shown that CP patients benefit from walking training by increasing their walking distance and speed, due to rehabilitation methods that focus on the lower extremities. For this reason, in this study, three different concept designs of ankle rehabilitation robot for CP patients are presented. The advantages and disadvantages of these designs are given and the proposed design is given in detail. The presented final design is aimed to support adolescents with CP aged from 12 to 18 and with weight up to 60 kg. The controllers and algorithms are written in Arduino and the robot operating system (ROS). The embedded software written in the ROS environment processes the gathered data to produce control signals. All the parts in the design are simulated in finite element analysis to check the factor of safety and shown that they are safe to operate. Keywords: Ankle, exoskeleton robot, rehabilitation robot, cerebral palsy, ROS