Development of an assist robot for walk rehabilitation to adapt either leg by attachable cuffs

We have developed a wearable assist robot for use in walking rehabilitation after total knee arthroplasty surgery. Our robot enables only one side leg to be supported by single motor, because the surgery is performed for one leg at a time. To adapt a roll back motion which is the flexion with sliding backward on the human knee joint, two types of the robots were developed. One robot is to support the right leg. The other is to support the left leg. However, it is desirable for the robot to be able to assist either left leg or right leg by using one robot. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the robot which is able to adapt to both leg. And, we confirmed that the robot can help each leg to walk in experiments. As a result, we found that it is preferable that the weight on the left and right of the robot is almost equal.