A novel active ankle orthosis system: Idea and design

An ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) is a device to support subjects who have weak ankles due to trauma, chronic and degenerative disease, and aging. Currently, there are a number of researches about the AFO; however, almost of them have not reminded about changing of Center of Pressure (CoP) points of the foot during locomotion. They focused on control ankle to implement dorsirflexion and plantar flexion movements around ankle joint as well as to prevent the weak ankle articulation from foot drop or foot slap gait. In this research, we presented a design process of a novel AFO prototype working as an exoskeleton which can control both dosirflexion and plantar flexion, prevent the weak ankle from both foot drop and foot slap gait. The idea to develop the new AFO was generated from the changing of CoP during locomotion. The design process was shown from idea to the complete 3D model which contains some novel mechanisms: Motion splitting mechanism (MSM), state changing mechanism (SCM), sole mechanism.