Design and Control of a Wearable Stewart Platform-Type Ankle-Foot Assistive Device

The design and control of an active ankle‐foot rehabilitation orthotic system that was designed as a wearable and portable rehabilitation and walking assistive tool is presented. This device can measure and assist the six degree of freedoms (DOFs) movement of the human ankle joint by using a Stewart platform mechanism, which can adapt to the displacement of the rotation axis during the movement of a human foot. The estimation method of an instantaneous rotation axis of ankle‐foot motion is also proposed. In this paper, the motion measurement and motion control performance of the developed assistive device is evaluated. Static and dynamic motion measurement and motion reproduction performance verification experiments are conducted. The experimental results showed that the developed assistive device is enough for measuring and controlling the human ankle‐foot motion.