Two-Week Rehabilitation with Auditory Biofeedback Prosthesis Reduces Whole Body Angular Momentum Range during Walking in Stroke Patients with Hemiplegia: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Walking rehabilitation is challenging in stroke patients with sensory impairments. In this study, we examined the two-week effect of an auditory biofeedback prosthesis, Auditory Foot (AF), on the change in the frontal whole body angular momentum (WBAM) range, before and after a two-week walking rehabilitation. We conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT). We employed statistical Bayesian modeling to understand the mechanism of the rehabilitation effect and predict the expected effect in new patients. The best-performing model indicated that the frontal WBAM range was reduced in the AF group by 12.9–28.7%. This suggests that the use of kinesthetic biofeedback in gait rehabilitation contributes to the suppression of frontal WBAM, resulting in an improved walking balance function in stroke patients.

Real-Time Identification of Knee Joint Walking Gait as Preliminary Signal for Developing Lower Limb Exoskeleton

An exoskeleton is a device used for walking rehabilitation. In order to develop a proper rehabilitation exoskeleton, a user’s walking intention needs to be captured as the initial step of work. Moreover, every human has a unique walking gait style. This work introduced a wearable sensor, which aimed to recognize the walking gait phase, as the fundamental step before applying it into the rehabilitation exoskeleton. The sensor used in this work was the IMU sensor, used to recognize the pitch angle generated from the knee joint while the user walks, as information about the walking gait cycle, before doing the investigation on how to identify the walking gait cycle. In order to identify the walking gait cycle, Neural Network has been proposed as a method. The gait cycle identification was generated to recognize the gait cycle on the knee joint. To verify the performance of the proposed method, experiments have been done in real-time application. The experiments were carried out with different processes such as walking on a flat floor, climbing up, and walking down stairs. Five subjects were trained and tested using the system. The experiments showed that the proposed method was able to recognize each gait cycle for all users as they wore the sensor on their knee joints. This study has the potential to be applied on an exoskeleton rehabilitation robot as a further research experiment.

Kinematics study of a 10 degrees-of-freedom lower extremity exoskeleton for crutch-less walking rehabilitation

BACKGROUND: Wearable lower extremity exoskeletons can provide walking assistance for the physical rehabilitation of paralyzed individuals. However, most of the existing exoskeletons require crutches to maintain balance, thus a self-balancing type is needed to improve applicability. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this work is to study the kinematic characteristics of a novel lower extremity exoskeleton for crutch-less walking rehabilitation, and evaluate the movement performance through practical experiments. METHODS: Based on the human lower limb structure and movement characteristics, a fully actuated 10 degrees-of-freedom (DoF) lower extremity exoskeleton was proposed. The kinematic characteristics of the exoskeleton were analyzed by the D-H method and geometric method, and the model validity was verified through simulations and experiments. RESULTS: The closed-form solutions for both forward and inverse kinematics models were obtained. The consistent results of theoretical calculation and numerical simulation have shown the accuracy of the established models. The practical experiments regarding six trials have demonstrated the movement performance of the proposed exoskeleton, including sit, stance, leg extension/flexion, and left/right swing. CONCLUSIONS: The kinematic characteristics of the proposed 10-DoF lower extremity exoskeleton are similar to the human lower limb, and it could meet the motion demands of crutch-less walking rehabilitation.

Redesign walker for children with diplegic cerebral palsy using TRIZ method

Children with cerebral palsy at rehabilitation centers had difficulty performing walking rehabilitation with the existing walker. The resulted in children with cerebral palsy feeling dissatisfied with existing walkers, and this dissatisfaction resulted in their interest in ongoing rehabilitation. The existing walker does not accommodate the needs of cerebral palsy children, resulting in lousy form and dissatisfaction when using a walker for rehabilitation and reduce their interest in rehabilitation. Therefore it is necessary to redesign the walker to prevent bad form and increase the satisfaction level of children with cerebral palsy. The QUEST 2.0 questionnaire was used as a reference for designing. Based on the dimensions from the QUEST 2.0 questionnaire, the walker design criteria were determined. Then use the TRIZ method to resolve any technical contradictions that occur at the design stage. Assistive device