Takashima Kenta, Nishikawa Satoshi, Niiyama Ryuma, Someya Takao, Onodera Hiroshi, Kuniyoshi Yasuo
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2015 Aug;2015:4578-81. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319413.
Recent studies have demonstrated that active gait training can recover voluntary locomotive ability of paralyzed rats. Rehabilitation devices used for studying spinal cord injury to date are usually fixed on a treadmill, but they have been used only slightly for active training. To process active rehabilitation, a wearable, lightweight device with adequate output is needed. Pouch motors, soft pneumatic actuators, are extremely light and have other benefits such as low cost, easy fabrication, and highly customizable design. They can be used to develop active gait rehabilitation devices. However, performance details of different motor designs have not been examined. As described herein, to build a wearable gait assistive device for rat study, we specifically examine how to design small pouch motors with a good contraction ratio and force output. Results show that pouch performance decreases dramatically with size, but better output is obtainable by separation into small 0.8 length-to-width ratio rooms. We used this knowledge to produce an assistive robot suit for gait rehabilitation and to test it with paralyzed rats. Results show that these small pouches can produce sufficient power to control hip joint movements during gait training. They can reveal the potential for new pouch motor applications for spinal cord injury studies.
最近的研究表明，主动步态训练可以恢复瘫痪大鼠的自主运动能力。迄今为止，用于研究脊髓损伤的康复设备通常固定在跑步机上，但它们在主动训练中的应用非常少。为了进行主动康复，需要一种可穿戴的、轻便且具有足够输出能力的设备。囊式电机，即软气动致动器，极其轻便，并且具有低成本、易于制造和高度可定制设计等其他优点。它们可用于开发主动步态康复设备。然而，不同电机设计的性能细节尚未得到研究。如本文所述，为了构建用于大鼠研究的可穿戴步态辅助设备，我们专门研究了如何设计具有良好收缩率和力输出的小型囊式电机。结果表明，囊式电机的性能会随着尺寸的减小而显著下降，但通过分隔成小的长宽比为0.8的腔室可获得更好的输出。我们利用这一知识制作了一种用于步态康复的辅助机器人套装，并在瘫痪大鼠身上进行了测试。结果表明，这些小型囊式电机能够产生足够的动力来控制步态训练期间的髋关节运动。它们揭示了囊式电机在脊髓损伤研究中的新应用潜力。
