Mechatronic design of low-cost control systems for rehabilitation and assisting devices

In this chapter, authors focus on mechatronic solutions for low-cost control devices for the homecare of elderly and people with reduced mobility, having the goal of assisting people in daily-life activities. The development of such systems can be exploited in the form of a toolkit to be flexible and applied either to rehabilitation or assistive systems, in order to aid movements with controlled position, force/torque, and acceleration, possibly introducing reliability, repetitiveness, and low cost in the related sector. In particular, the development of a low-cost control system design allows the applicability of the solution to a broad range of devices for the home-care. The authors aim to develop low-cost technologies for the homecare of elderly and people with motor impairments trying to reduce significantly the overall costs to facilitate wider use of assisting and rehabilitation systems. In particular, a Sit-To-Stand (STS) assisting device is considered as a paradigmatic example to illustrate design considerations.