Designing the LeHab robot for passive exercise in neurological patients

Abstract

Rehabilitation for neurological patients as stroke or spinal cord injury is important for improving the quality of their lives. Furthermore, sustaining the properties of muscular tissue is necessary to prepare the other therapeutics. Passive exercise is a technique to maintain the tissue and prevent complication as deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Since, these patients cannot move their legs by themselves. The aim of this study is to design and develop an equipment to assist these people. LeHab robot was designed to solve this problem. This robot consists of three degrees-of-freedoms, i.e. hip flexion/extension, knee flexion/extension and ankle dorsiflexion/plantarflexion. To control this system, PID-microcontrollers are utilized for driving the motors. The result suggested that the prototype robot can successfully move when it is controlled by computer programming. © 2012 IEEE.