Adaptive system for control of active ankle-foot orthosisand gait analysis

Abstract

The main aim of this research is the development of an autonomous adaptive system for actuation, data acquisition and control of activeankle-foot orthosis. In this paper the design ofa control unit composed by microcontroller, driver and sensor system, and its application to theactuation and position of the foot orthotic segment is presented. The research work combines hardware and software design of the intelligent control device with graphical interface for representation and analysis of the data acquired duringhuman motion. The dynamic system simulation is done in Matlab Simulink and SimMechanics. A laboratory model of the proposed system was implemented to demonstrate its autonomy and verify experimentally its functionality.The proposed control device can be used in several applications involving human motion analysis and control of different types of orthoses or functional electrical stimulation used for gait correction.