Motion control (brushless DC motor) of a lower limb robotic orthosis for rehabilitation of stroke and incomplete SCI patients

• Main Author: Lim, Zhenhui
• Other Authors: Soh Yeng Chai
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/17068
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Strokes and spinal cord injuries (SCI) can cause motor malfunction to the patients resulting in the loss of the ability to walk. Rehabilitation is needed to help strokes or SCI patients to improve on their motor function. Presently, rehabilitations are usually carried out by physiotherapists. The high cost and time involved with such methods can prevent patients from going for therapy sessions. Beside rehabilitation carried out by therapists, studies shows that gait devices can also help in the recovery of motor malfunction. This project is motivated by the lack of bio-feedback controlled exoskeleton for rehabilitation purpose for stroke or SCI patients. This project is intended for patients who have partially lost their ability to control their lower limb due to physical traumas like stroke and spinal cord injuries. The objective of this project is to design and develop a software algorithm to control the brushless DC motors for the lower limb of the existing rehabilitation device. Understanding of the gait cycle is necessary before the author is able to create an algorithm to control the motors. A practical control algorithm of the gait device for the rehabilitation of the lower limbs had been proposed by the author. The motors are controlled by the Galil DMC-2182 controller and the control algorithm is implemented by first writing the basic program using the Windows Servo Design Kit. A Graphical User Interface is designed using Visual C++ to allow user to download the basic program to the controller that suits the patients’ rehabilitation needs through the very familiar Window interface.