A Novel Robotic Walker for Over-Ground Gait Rehabilitation

Ye, Jing; Reyes, Francisco Anaya; Huang, Yu

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-46669-9_199

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Walking on a treadmill shows that both the treadmill speed and the amount of unloading have considerable influence on gait parameters [ 73 , 80 , 83 , 90 , 91 , 120 – 122 ]. Cadence and stride length are affected more by the treadmill speed than by the percentage of BWU, except for above 75% BWU [ 67 , 80 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of body weight unloading on human gait characteristics: a systematic review

Apte

Plooij

Vallery

2018

J NeuroEngineering Rehabil

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BackgroundBody weight support (BWS) systems have shown promise as rehabilitation tools for neurologically impaired individuals. This paper reviews the experiment-based research on BWS systems with the aim: (1) To investigate the influence of body weight unloading (BWU) on gait characteristics; (2) To study whether the effects of BWS differ between treadmill and overground walking and (3) To investigate if modulated BWU influences gait characteristics less than unmodulated BWU.MethodA systematic literature search was conducted in the following search engines: Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Statistical analysis was used to quantify the effects of BWU on gait parameters.Results54 studies of experiments with healthy and neurologically impaired individuals walking in a BWS system were included and 32 of these were used for the statistical analysis. Literature was classified using three distinctions: (1) treadmill or overground walking; (2) the type of subjects and (3) the nature of unloading force. Only 27% studies were based on neurologically impaired subjects; a low number considering that they are the primary user group for BWS systems. The studies included BWU from 5% to 100% and the 30% and 50% BWU conditions were the most widely studied. The number of participants varied from 1 to 28, with an average of 12. It was seen that due to the increase in BWU level, joint moments, muscle activity, energy cost of walking and ground reaction forces (GRF) showed higher reduction compared to gait spatio-temporal and joint kinematic parameters. The influence of BWU on kinematic and spatio-temporal gait parameters appeared to be limited up to 30% unloading. 5 gait characteristics presented different behavior in response to BWU for overground and treadmill walking. Remaining 21 gait characteristics showed similar behavior but different magnitude of change for overground and treadmill walking. Modulated unloading force generally led to less difference from the 0% condition than unmodulated unloading.ConclusionThis review has shown that BWU influences all gait characteristics, albeit with important differences between the kinematic, spatio-temporal and kinetic characteristics. BWU showed stronger influence on the kinetic characteristics of gait than on the spatio-temporal parameters and the kinematic characteristics. It was ascertained that treadmill and overground walking can alter the effects of BWU in a different manner. Our results indicate that task-specific gait training is likely to be achievable at a BWU level of 30% and below.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12984-018-0380-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of body weight unloading on human gait characteristics: a systematic review

Apte

Plooij

Vallery

2018

J NeuroEngineering Rehabil

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“…Although the majority of biomechanical studies on the effects of walking with bodyweight support are done using treadmills [7][8][9]17,19,20], a few studies investigate the biomechanics of bodyweight supported overground walking. The overground bodyweight support studies have not investigated the effects of walking at more than 50% bodyweight support [8,16,[21][22][23][24]. To the best of our knowledge, the effect of high levels of constant bodyweight support on the biomechanics of walking at different speeds overground is currently unknown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Validation of a Low-Cost Bodyweight Support System for Overground Walking

MacLean

Ferris

2020

Journal of Medical Devices

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Walking with bodyweight support is a vital tool for both gait rehabilitation and biomechanics research. There are few commercially available bodyweight support systems for overground walking that are able to provide a near constant lifting force of more than 50% bodyweight. The devices that do exist are expensive and are not often used outside of rehabilitation clinics. Our aim was to design, build, and validate a bodyweight support device for overground walking that: 1) cost less than $5,000, 2) could support up to 75% of the users' bodyweight (BW), and 3) had small (±5 % BW) fluctuations in force. We used pairs of constant force springs to provide the constant lifting force. To validate the force fluctuation, we recruited 8 participants to walk at 0.4, 0.8, 1.2 and 1.6 m/s with 0, 22, 46 and 69% of their bodyweight supported. We used a load cell to measure force through the system and motion capture data to create a vector of the supplied lifting force. The final prototype cost less than $4,000 and was able to support 80% of the users' bodyweight. Fluctuations in vertical force increased with speed and bodyweight support, reaching a maximum of 10% at 1.6 m/s and 69% BW support.

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A review in gait rehabilitation devices and applied control techniques

Chaparro-Cárdenas

Lozano-Guzmán

Ramirez-Bautista

et al. 2018

Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology

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With this exhaustive review, we can conclude that the degree of complexity of the rehabilitation device influences in short and long-term therapeutic results since the movements become more controlled. However, there is still a lot of work in the sense of motion control in order to perform trajectories that are more alike the natural movements of humans. There are many control techniques in other areas, which seek to improve the performance of the process. These techniques may possibly be applicable in gait rehabilitation devices, obtaining controllers that are more efficient and that adapts to different people and the necessities that entail every disease. Implications for Rehabilitation Rehabilitation helps people to improve the activities of their daily life, allowing them to observe their progress in the functional abilities as the months pass by with intensive and repetitive therapies. There is a mobility issue when the patient needs to move to the hospital or to the laboratory, which is not always feasible. For overcoming it, patients use the equipment at home to perform their daily therapy. However, they need the sufficient knowledge about its operation, also about the therapeutic movements, the therapy duration and the movement speed. Besides, is necessary to place the equipment in a proper and lively environment that helps to forget or reduce pain while the patient moves his joints progressively. The purpose of robotic rehabilitation devices is to generate repetitive and progressive movements, according to the motor disability. There are training trajectories to follow, which motivate patients to generate active movements. The benefits of robotic rehabilitation depend on the ability of each patient to adapt to the speed and load variations generated by the device, improving and reinforcing motor functions in therapy, especially in patients with advanced disabilities in early rehabilitation. Multi-joint rehabilitation devices are more effective than single-joint rehabilitation devices because they involve a higher number of muscles in the therapy. The greater the number of degrees of freedom (DoF) of the device, it cushions its effect in the patient because the inertia is reduced and higher torques are generated. The assistive technological devices allows to explore different rehabilitation techniques that motivate the patient in therapy, increasing appropriately the energy and pressure in the blood which is reflected in gradually recovering his ability to walk.

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A Novel Robotic Walker for Over-Ground Gait Rehabilitation

Cited by 5 publications

References 3 publications

Influence of body weight unloading on human gait characteristics: a systematic review

Influence of body weight unloading on human gait characteristics: a systematic review

Design and Validation of a Low-Cost Bodyweight Support System for Overground Walking

A review in gait rehabilitation devices and applied control techniques

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