Control Strategies for Patient-Assisted Training Using the Ankle Rehabilitation Robot (ARBOT)

This paper presents the control architecture and experimental results of the high-performance Ankle Rehabilitation roBOT, ARBOT. The goal of this study is to design suitable control algorithms for assisted training and rehabilitation of the ankle joint in presence of musculoskeletal injuries. A position control scheme is used for patient-passive exercises, while an admittance control technique is employed to perform patient-active exercises with and without motion assistance. The selection and design of the control algorithms are based on the analysis of the rehabilitation protocol taking into account the dynamics of the system and the dynamics of the interaction between the human and the robot. The performance of the proposed control algorithms is analyzed through experiments on a group of healthy subjects.