Review and Analysis of Platform-Related Performance of Rehabilitation Lower Limb Exoskeletons

Abstract

Powered Lower Limb Exoskeletons (PLLE) have attracted much interest due to their potential applications. They provide assistance for persons with disabilities to accomplish activities of daily living (ADL), and more importantly, assist them in achieving their rehabilitation goals. However, there is still uncertainty regarding the quality and benefits that PLLEs can offer to patients. This is due to limited usability and performance of current PLLEs, insufficient clinical use of PLLEs for different patients with high diversity in their disability type and impairment, and also the large gap between the technological state of the art and clinical expectations. In this study, we review and analyse various factors that can improve the effectiveness of PLLEs at yielding better assistance and rehabilitation training for patients with motor impairments. First, we define a set of criteria that characterize the majority of expectations for the rehabilitation and assistance domains and we use them for evaluating PLLEs depending on the context. Then, we include the effects of control strategies and combined approaches which include auxiliary devices such as functional electrical stimulation and smart crutches applied to PLLEs with regard to the criteria we defined.