Manufactura y pruebas de un prototipo de exoesqueleto para la rehabilitación física de miembros inferiores para el grupo de investigación y estudios de bioingeniería de la Facultad de Mecánica ESPOCH.

Abstract

The purpose of this titling project was to create a functional exoskeleton prototype with 6 degrees of freedom to perform physical rehabilitation in lower limbs. The project was carried out by the group of research and studies in bioengineering (GIEBI) of the School of Mechanics of the ESPOCH aimed at improving the tools that have revolutionized the field of medicine, developing different mechanisms that help to improve rehabilitation procedures in inferior members, where there was a compilation of information that involved the evolution of exoskeletons for lower members to the most innovative of today, the theory was queried to understand some issues and with the aim of performing the corresponding analyzes for the design of the exoskeleton and its respective manufacture. The anthropometric and pathological description of the lower limb was made, of a patient with a disability where the patient does not coordinate the movements of the walking gait. The CAD modeling of the exoskeleton redesign was carried out in SolidWorks for the simulation and programming in NX, adding to this contribution a mobile rehabilitation crane. Once the user's requirements were met, the selection of actuators was carried out. For this purpose, the most critical movements of the leg were analyzed and exported to MSC Adams so that in the graphs of the joints of the leg, the torques could be analyzed. close. In order to evaluate if the chosen material is the most suitable for the application that is wanted to give the device the Ashby method was used. The mobile rehabilitation crane was built and the parts were machined in a 3-axis cnc milling machine for its respective assembly of the exoskeleton, after which it was verified that the parts and dimensions are adequate to generate a similar trajectory of travel. the actual march of a healthy person. The movement of the links that make up the exoskeleton was made with electric actuators that in this case were step motors driven with their respective control. And finally, the simulation and mechanical tests were carried out where the simulation of the march was concluded giving them hip movements: +21 to -15 degrees, knee: 0 to 39 degrees, ankle: +18 to -18 degrees and it is recommended the change of actuators with improvements and advances for new investigations of the same research group (GIEBI) in the final construction of the prototype.