Synchronized walking coordination for impact-less footpad contact of an overground gait rehabilitation system: NaTUre-gaits

Abstract

Due to the labor-intensiveness and the shortage of therapists in the application of most forms of manually assisted gait training in neuro-rehabilitation, robotics rehabilitation gait systems have been developed to contribute in such fields of neuro-rehabilitation. This paper presents an overground gait rehabilitation robot, which consists of a pair of robotic orthosis (RO) connected to pelvic arm (PA) and mounted on a mobile platform (MP). As the robotic orthosis (RO) is connected to pelvic arm (PA), the compensation between the two modules should be considered. Possible problems that may surface during overground walking include: 1. Ground impact problem. 2. Poor coordination to mobile platform (MP) which would cause foot drag. To reduce, if not to avoid, the ground impact and dragging of the footpad occurring during the course of overground walking with help of the device, a gait motion generation is developed and specified to adjust the gait patterns for an impactless and smooth footpad contact. The initial tests demonstrate the effectiveness and smoothness of the overground walking on the system.