Development of a “transparent operation mode” for a lower-limb exoskeleton designed for children with cerebral palsy

Robot-assisted rehabilitation in children and young adults with Cerebral Palsy (CP) is expected to lead to neuroplasticity and reduce the burden of motor impairments. For a lower-limb exoskeleton to perform well in this context, it is essential that the robot be "transparent" to the user and produce torques only when voluntarily-generated motor outputs deviate significantly from the target trajectory. However, the development of transparent operation modes and assistance-as-need control schema are still open problems with several implementation challenges. This paper presents a theoretical approach and provides a discussion of the key issues pertinent to designing a transparent operation mode for a lower-limb exoskeleton suitable for children and young adults with CP. Based on the dynamics of exoskeletons as well as friction models and human-robot interaction models, we propose a control strategy aimed to minimize human-machine interaction forces when subjects generate motor outputs that match the target trajectory. The material is presented as a conceptual framework that can be generalized to other exoskeleton systems for overground walking.