Design and Development of a Flexible Active Ankle Joint Orthosis for Locomotion Assistance

Active ankle joint orthosis is an artificial wearable device that is closely fitted to the human ankle and combines human intelligence and intentions with the powered robot joints.However, most of the existing designs have only focused on one degree of freedom (DOF) of the ankle joint: namely plantarflexion-dorsiflexion.Alternatively, a modular power-assist flexible active ankle orthosis is proposed, addressing anthropomorphic architecture of design, and supporting multiple DOFs of ankle for locomotion assistance of the physically weak individuals.The proposed ankle joint orthosis was designed with the aid of CAD tools followed by fabrication of a working model.Electrically powered systems with gear transmissions were adapted to support the principal motions during normal Gait.In parallel, the design of the control algorithm was carried out based on the EMG signals.The future advancements have been focused on developing a novel control method that provides sufficient flexibility to assist a wide variety of lower-limb motions.