Mechanism design of an ankle robot MKA-III for rehabilitation training

With the development of aging society, the number of hemiplegia patients grows rapidly and over 75% of survivors suffering hemiplegia need rehabilitation training. To assist therapists, series of rehabilitation training robots were carried out. However, most of current researches are only focusing on function training. They ignore the importance of neurological rehabilitation in early phrase of hemiplegia. Early rehabilitation takes a fundamental position in neurological rehabilitation and whole-body rehabilitation. To fulfill all of those requirements, MKA series have been developed. During the experiment, there is some problems including unreliable transmission and dehumanization design. For these reasons, in this paper, we propose the MKA-III. Based on physiological structure and rehabilitation theory, the mechanism was design. In this paper, the detail design of the mechanism is introduced. The mechanical structure includes four parts, adduction/abduction parts, dorsiflexion/plantar flexion parts, inversion/eversion parts and sensing unit. Each part of ankle rehabilitation robot was introduced in detail. In addition, for the motor control and information acquisition, the hard system is introduced.