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An arm for a leg: Adapting a robotic arm for gait rehabilitation

The purpose of this study was to adapt a multipurpose robotic arm for gait rehabilitation. An advantage of this approach is versatility: a robotic arm can be attached to almost any point on the body to assist with lower- and upper-extremity rehabilitation. This may be more cost-effective than purchasing and training rehabilitation staff to use several specialized rehabilitation robots. Robotic arms also have a more human-like morphology, which may make them less intimidating or alien to patients. In this study a mechanical interface was developed that allows a fast, secure, and safe attachment between a robotic arm and a human limb. The effectiveness of this interface was assessed by having two healthy subjects walk on a treadmill with and without a robotic arm attached to their legs. The robot's ability to follow the subjects' swinging legs was evaluated at slow and fast walking speeds. Two different control schemes were evaluated: one using the standard manufacturer-provided control algorithm, and another using a custom algorithm that actively compensated for robot-human interaction forces. The results showed that both robot control schemes performed well for slow walking. There were negligible differences between subjects' gait kinematics with and without the robot. During fast walking with the robot, similar results were obtained for one subject; however, the second subject demonstrated noticeable gait modifications. Together, these results show the feasibility of adapting a multipurpose robotic arm for gait rehabilitation.