Artemiadis Panagiotis K, Krebs Hermano Igo
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2010;2010:1287-91. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5626407.
Walking impairments are a common sequela of neurological injury, severely affecting the quality of life of both adults and children. Gait therapy is the traditional approach to ameliorate the problem by re-training the nervous system and there have been some attempts to mechanize such approach. In this paper, we present a novel device to deliver gait therapy, which, in contrast to previous approaches, takes advantage of the concept of passive walkers and the natural dynamics of the lower extremity in order to deliver more "ecological" therapy. We also discuss the closed-loop control scheme, which enables safe and efficient operation of the device, and present the initial feasibility tests with unimpaired subjects.
行走障碍是神经损伤常见的后遗症，严重影响成人和儿童的生活质量。步态疗法是通过重新训练神经系统来改善这一问题的传统方法，并且已经有人尝试将这种方法机械化。在本文中，我们提出了一种用于提供步态疗法的新型设备，与以往方法不同的是，该设备利用被动步行器的概念和下肢的自然动力学来提供更“生态”的疗法。我们还讨论了能够使该设备安全高效运行的闭环控制方案，并展示了对未受损受试者进行的初步可行性测试。
