Novel swing-assist un-motorized exoskeletons for gait training

Robotics is emerging as a promising tool for functional training of human movement. Much of the research in this area over the last decade has focused on upper extremity orthotic devices.

Some recent commercial designs proposed for the lower extremity are powered and expensive - hence, these are unaffordable by most clinics. In this paper, we present a novel un-motorized bilateral exoskeleton that can be used to assist in treadmill training of motor-impaired patients, such as with motor-incomplete spinal cord injury.

The exoskeleton is designed such that the human leg will have a desirable swing motion, once it is strapped to the exoskeleton. Since this exoskeleton is un-motorized, it can be produced cheaply and also will have the potential to reduce the physical demand on therapists during treadmill training.The salient features of this swing-assist exoskeleton are: (i) The design uses torsional springs at the hip and the knee joints to assist the swing motion.

The springs get charged by the treadmill during stance phase of the leg and provide propulsion forces to the leg during swing. (ii) The design of the exoskeleton uses simple dynamic models of sagittal plane walking, which are used to optimize the parameters of the springs so that the foot can clear the ground and have a desirable forward motion during walking.

(iii) This design approach was used to construct a bilateral exoskeleton and was tested during treadmill walking for a range of walking speeds between 1.0 mph and 4.0 mph. Joint encoders and interface force-torque sensors mounted on the exoskeleton were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the exoskeleton in terms of the hip and knee joint torques applied by the human during treadmill walking.

Author: Kalyan MankalaSai BanalaSunil Agrawal
Credits/Source: Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 2009, 6:24

Published on: 2009-07-03

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