IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2022;30:2671-2681. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2022.3205850. Epub 2022 Sep 22.
Providing aging adults with engaging, at-home balance therapy is essential to promote long-term adherence to unsupervised training and to foster independence. We developed a portable interactive balance training system that provides real-world visual cues on balance performance using wobble board tilt angles to control the speed of a robotic car platform in a three-dimensional environment. The goal of this study was to validate this mobile balance therapy system for home use across the lifespan. Twenty younger (18-39 years) and nineteen older (58-74 years) healthy adults performed balance training with and without visual feedback while standing on a wobble board instrumented with a consumer-grade inertial measurement unit (IMU) and optical motion tracking markers. Participants performed feedback trials based on either the robotic car's movements or a commercially-available virtual game. Wobble board tilt measurements were highly correlated between IMU and optical measurement systems ( [Formula: see text]), with high agreement in outcome metrics ( [Formula: see text]) and small bias ( [Formula: see text]). Both measurement systems identified similar aging, feedback, and stance type effects including (1) altered movement control when older adults performed tilting trials with either robotic or virtual feedback compared to without feedback, (2) two-fold greater wobble board oscillations in older vs. younger adults during steady standing, (3) no difference in board oscillations during steady standing in narrow vs. wide double support, and (4) greater wobble board oscillations for single compared to double support. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of implementing goal-directed robotic balance training with mobile tracking of balance performance in home environments.
为老年人提供有趣的居家平衡治疗至关重要，这有助于促进长期坚持非监督训练和培养独立性。我们开发了一种便携式交互式平衡训练系统，该系统使用摇摆板倾斜角度为平衡性能提供真实的视觉提示，以控制三维环境中机器人车平台的速度。本研究的目的是验证这种可用于家庭使用的移动平衡治疗系统在整个生命周期内的有效性。20 名年轻（18-39 岁）和 19 名年长（58-74 岁）健康成年人在使用和不使用视觉反馈的情况下，分别在带有消费级惯性测量单元（IMU）和光学运动跟踪标记的摇摆板上进行平衡训练。参与者根据机器人车的运动或商业上可用的虚拟游戏进行反馈试验。IMU 和光学测量系统之间的摇摆板倾斜测量高度相关（ [Formula: see text]），具有高度一致的结果指标（ [Formula: see text]）和较小的偏差（ [Formula: see text]）。两种测量系统都确定了类似的老龄化、反馈和站立类型的影响，包括（1）与无反馈相比，当老年人用机器人或虚拟反馈进行倾斜试验时，运动控制发生变化，（2）与年轻成年人相比，老年人在稳定站立时的摇摆板摆动幅度大两倍，（3）在稳定站立时，窄支撑和宽双支撑的摆动板摆动幅度没有差异，（4）与双支撑相比，单支撑的摆动板摆动幅度更大。这些发现表明，在家庭环境中使用移动跟踪实现目标导向的机器人平衡训练是可行的。
