Abstract
This paper proposes an intelligent ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) for hemiplegic patients. The proposed AFO is equipped with a pneumatic passive device at its ankle joint, whose mechanical impedance property can be properly adjusted to the subject's gait. The effectiveness of developed AFO is confirmed through orthotic gait analyses based on gait measurement and ankle-joint torque measurement. The experimental results reveal the following advantage of our method : (1) the range of motion of ankle and knee is increased ; (2) the stability of upper body in stance phase is elevated.
