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JRM Vol.38 No.4 pp. 1059-1072
(2026)

Paper:

Error Compensation Strategies for Lower-Limb Rehabilitation Robots: A Staged Approach with MLP and Transformer Models

Aihui Wang ORCID Icon, Rui Teng, Jinkang Dong, Xuebin Yue ORCID Icon, and Xiang Zhang

School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, Zhongyuan University of Technology
No.41 Zhongyuan Road, Zhengzhou, Henan 450007, China

Corresponding author

Received:
August 25, 2025
Accepted:
March 12, 2026
Published:
August 20, 2026
Keywords:
lower-limb rehabilitation robot, error compensation, MLP, Transformer, gait phase detection
Abstract

Lower-limb rehabilitation robots are valuable for gait training, but accurate joint motor angle tracking remains challenging due to various motion-related disturbances. This paper presents a staged joint-compensation strategy to improve control accuracy. The gait control process is partitioned into initiation, cyclic, and termination phases. A multilayer perceptron is employed during initiation and termination to predict and compensate for short-term aperiodic errors, while a Transformer-based sequence model combined with repetitive-control concepts is used in the cyclic phase to predict and correct periodic errors. Phase detection and safety-constraint mechanisms are integrated to ensure system stability and safety. Experiments are performed on a self-developed robotic platform with field-oriented control at the motor level, using a 165 cm, 60 kg dummy as the load. The proposed strategy substantially reduced joint-angle RMSE: left hip from 0.692° to 0.494° (28.6% reduction), right hip from 0.687° to 0.402° (41.5% reduction), left knee from 1.754° to 0.426° (75.7% reduction), and right knee from 1.667° to 0.461° (72.3% reduction). Ablation studies and repeated-trial statistical analyses further confirm the effectiveness of the approach. This study significantly reduces the gait trajectory tracking errors of joint actuators in a lower-limb rehabilitation robot, thereby providing a feasible and effective approach for the optimization of its control algorithm design.

Lower-limb rehabilitation robot

Lower-limb rehabilitation robot

Cite this article as:
A. Wang, R. Teng, J. Dong, X. Yue, and X. Zhang, “Error Compensation Strategies for Lower-Limb Rehabilitation Robots: A Staged Approach with MLP and Transformer Models,” J. Robot. Mechatron., Vol.38 No.4, pp. 1059-1072, 2026.
Data files:
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Last updated on Aug. 19, 2026