Diseño y control de un prototipo robotizado para la rehabilitación de lesiones de rodilla enfocado al fortalecimiento muscular.

Abstract

Knee injuries occur very frequently in high-performance athletes due to the great joint efforts to which they are frequently subjected, but they also occur in people of different ages due to other factors. Despite the different injuries that can occur, all suffer atrophy of the muscle groups that are close to the joint and therefore a rehabilitation of these muscles must be carried out during the process of recovering from the injury. The general objective of the project is to design a robotic prototype controlled by artificial intelligence for the rehabilitation of knee injuries focused on muscle strengthening. The designed prototype simulates the different movements executed by the health professional during the rehabilitation process, these being: isometric contraction, passive movement, free active movement and resistive active movement, seeking to recover joint mobility and strengthen the muscles of the patient. For the design of the prototype, an analysis of movement in patients was carried out by a physiotherapist. The procedures were recorded on video, allowing these movements to be analyzed in biomechanical analysis software. Valuable data could be extracted from this analysis, such as the trajectories described by the patients, which were the basis for starting the design of the mechanism. After analyzing these trajectories, a synthesis of mechanisms was carried out that made it possible to determine a type of mechanism suitable to achieve the desired movements for rehabilitation. To achieve the appropriate dimensions that would allow generating the correct movements for different patients, an optimization was carried out, some calculations were made that allowed obtaining the required torques and thus the desired characteristics of the actuators could be known. Afterwards, the actuators were modeled and a classic PID control algorithm was found that would allow controlled movements to be carried out in the prototype.