A passive swing-assistive planar external orthosis for gait training on treadmill

Autor: Ali Mokhtarian, Sunil K. Agrawal, Abbas Fattah
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering. 37:1-10
ISSN: 1806-3691
1678-5878
DOI: 10.1007/s40430-014-0135-1
Popis: Orthoses are devices used for rehabilitation of the patients having muscle weakness at their limbs. People with motor-incomplete motion can train their weak limbs using appropriate orthoses to improve their muscle activity and walking performance. In this paper, we propose a lower leg planar external passive orthosis to assist the patients with lower leg disabilities during swing phase of gait on treadmill. This orthosis attaches to the shank of the leg and its other end is connected to a walking frame. In this work, we optimize the physical and geometrical parameters of external orthosis together with the parameters of two torsional springs located at its joints or two linear springs connected to its links, to obtain a desired swing motion of the leg without existence of any actuators or making any effort by the user. Applying kinematic constraints of the closed-loop system consisting of the human leg and the external orthosis in addition to dynamic equations of motion, optimization process is accomplished using Genetic Algorithm approach through computer simulation. The simulation results show that the actual trajectories of hip and knee joint angles of the leg are very close to the desired ones during swing phase of gait on treadmill.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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