IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2018 Apr;26(4):847-855. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2018.2815656.
Exoskeletons for gait training commonly use a rigid-linked "skeleton" which makes them heavy and bulky. Cable-driven exoskeletons eliminate the rigid-linked skeleton, providing a lighter and transparent design. Current cable-driven exoskeletons are aimed only at gait assistance by providing short bursts of forces to the leg during walking. It has not yet been shown if these designs are suitable for gait retraining, where rehabilitative forces need to be continuously applied to the leg in response to errors from a desired movement. The goal of this study is to investigate if a cable-driven leg exoskeleton can retrain the gait of human users. Nine healthy subjects were trained by a cable-driven leg exoskeleton to walk in a new gait pattern with 30% increase in step height from their natural gait. After 40 min of training, the gait of the subjects became significantly closer to the target gait than before the training. In three different post-training sessions, the step height of the subjects increased by 22%, 29%, and 31% on an average. In a fourth post-training session, when the subjects were instructed to ignore the training and walk naturally, the step height remained increased by 11%. These results confirm the potential of cable-driven designs in gait training applications.
外骨骼通常使用刚性连接的“骨架”来进行步态训练，这使得它们既笨重又庞大。而缆索驱动的外骨骼则消除了刚性连接的骨架，提供了更轻、更透明的设计。目前，缆索驱动的外骨骼仅旨在通过在行走过程中向腿部提供短时间的力来辅助步态。尚未证明这些设计是否适合步态再训练，在步态再训练中，需要根据期望运动的误差持续向腿部施加康复力。本研究的目的是探讨缆索驱动的腿部外骨骼是否可以重新训练人类使用者的步态。九名健康受试者接受了缆索驱动的腿部外骨骼训练，以新的步态模式行走，步幅比自然步态增加 30%。经过 40 分钟的训练，受试者的步态明显比训练前更接近目标步态。在四个不同的训练后阶段，受试者的步幅平均增加了 22%、29%和 31%。在第四个训练后阶段，当受试者被指示忽略训练并自然行走时，步幅仍增加了 11%。这些结果证实了缆索驱动设计在步态训练应用中的潜力。
