Muijzer-Witteveen Heidi J B, Nataletti Sara, Agnello Martina, Casadio Maura, van Asseldonk Edwin H F
IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2017 Jul;2017:1482-1487. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2017.8009457.
People with Spinal Cord Injury do not only lack the ability to control their muscles, but also miss the sensory information from below the level of their lesion. Therefore, it may become difficult for them to perceive the state of the body during walking, which is however often used to control wearable exoskeletons. In the present study the possibilities of providing vibrotactile feedback about the Center of Mass (CoM) during walking were investigated. The results showed that healthy subjects could successfully interpret the provided vibrotactile cues and change their walking pattern accordingly. Vibrotactile stimulation was either provided in a concurrent (over the complete CoM movement) or terminal (only when the desired CoM displacement was reached) way. The latter led to a better accuracy and can be easily implemented in a wearable exoskeleton where a certain amount of CoM displacement is needed to initiate stepping.
脊髓损伤患者不仅缺乏控制肌肉的能力，而且还缺失损伤平面以下的感觉信息。因此，他们在行走过程中可能难以感知身体状态，然而身体状态却常常被用于控制可穿戴外骨骼。在本研究中，我们调查了在行走过程中提供关于质心（CoM）的振动触觉反馈的可能性。结果表明，健康受试者能够成功解读所提供的振动触觉线索，并相应地改变他们的行走模式。振动触觉刺激是以并发（在整个质心运动过程中）或终端（仅当达到所需的质心位移时）方式提供的。后者导致了更高的准确性，并且可以很容易地在需要一定量的质心位移来启动步幅的可穿戴外骨骼中实现。
