Design and Evaluation of the LOPES Exoskeleton Robot for Interactive Gait Rehabilitation

This paper introduces a newly developed gait rehabilitation device. The device, called LOPES, combines a freely translatable and 2-D-actuated pelvis segment with a leg exoskeleton containing three actuated rotational joints: two at the hip and one at the knee. The joints are impedance controlled to allow bidirectional mechanical interaction between the robot and the training subject. Evaluation measurements show that the device allows both a "patient-in-charge" and "robot-in-charge" mode, in which the robot is controlled either to follow or to guide a patient, respectively. Electromyography (EMG) measurements (one subject) on eight important leg muscles, show that free walking in the device strongly resembles…