Optimum determination of motor mount locations for a cable-driven rehabilitation robot

This paper presents the mathematical modeling and simulation of a cable-driven robotic device that can be used in gait rehabilitation of patients with lower extremity disabilities. The problem of finding the optimum motor mount location of the robotic systems is addressed. An eight wire cable robot is considered to assist a model of human body during walking. Dynamic equations of the robot are solved to obtain tensions in cables for entire cycle of walking. By exploiting a numerical procedure, the workspace of the robot are explored to find optimum motors mount location in which the cables always remain in tension. The optimum locations are determined based on minimum of sum of cable tensions. The obtained simulation results can be used for development of an efficient cable-driven based robotic rehabilitation system.