A Servomotor Controller for Simulating Human Motion in the Testing of Rehabilitation Equipment Dynamics

This paper presents the design of a simple digital servomotor control algorithm used to simulate human motion in the testing of rehabilitation/exercise equipment performance. Design performance specifications were determined to simulate typical human motion torque and dynamics. The motor was modelled mathematically, and the parameters of the model were obtained from a step input response. The minimal prototype method was used to obtain a digital control algorithm, which was implemented in the FORTH language on a PDP 11/23 computer.