A two-degree-of-freedom motor-powered gait orthosis for spinal cord injury patients

作者：Yasuharu Ohta, Hideo Yano, Rie Suzuki, M Yoshida, Noritaka Kawashima, Kimitaka Nakazawa · 发表于：Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part H Journal of Engineering in Medicine · 年份：2007 · DOI：10.1243/09544119jeim55 · 被引用次数：74 · 研究领域：Spinal Cord Injury Research、Cerebral Palsy and Movement Disorders、Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery

A number of orthoses have been developed to restore stance and walking in paraplegic subjects. Compliance, however, has been limited, mainly owing to walking effort. Use of the forces produced by actuators is an effective way to solve the problem of the considerable effort required for orthotic gait, namely high muscular effort and high energy expenditure. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of assistance by external actuators on the orthotic gait of spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. Two kinds of linear actuator were developed by using direct current (d.c.) motors for assisting the knee and hip joint of a gait orthosis. They were mounted on the knee and hip joint of a commercial advanced reciprocating gait orthosis (ARGO), and a new two-degree-of-freedom externally powered gait orthosis was thus developed. The orthosis was assessed through inter-subject experiments on five male adult complete SCI patients. Owing to the short training period available for the assisted gait, simultaneous operation of both joint actuators was not conducted: either the knee actuation or the hip actuation was executed only. Thus, the knee actuator and the hip actuator were assessed with a T12 subject and with subjects for T5, T8, T11, and T12 respectively. The motions of the gaits, assisted by the linear actuators, were measured by a Vicon 370 system, and the general gait parameters and compensatory motions were evaluated. Results demonstrated that (a) all subjects cou...