Devices for Gait and Balance Rehabilitation: General Classification and a Narrative Review of End Effector-Based Manipulators

Gait and balance have a direct impact on patients’ independence and quality of life. Due to a higher life expectancy, the number of patients suffering neurological disorders has increased exponentially, with gait and balance impairments being the main side effects. In this context, the use of rehabi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inApplied sciences Vol. 14; no. 10; p. 4147
Main Authors Diego, Paul, Herrero, Saioa, Macho, Erik, Corral, Javier, Diez, Mikel, Campa, Francisco J, Pinto, Charles
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.05.2024
Subjects
Analysis
Balance
Brain
Classification
end effectors
Fitness equipment
Gait
Health aspects
Nervous system diseases
Neurological disorders
Neurophysiology
parallel manipulators
Patients
Rehabilitation
Robotics
Robots
Stroke
Therapy
Netherlands
Germany
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Summary:Gait and balance have a direct impact on patients’ independence and quality of life. Due to a higher life expectancy, the number of patients suffering neurological disorders has increased exponentially, with gait and balance impairments being the main side effects. In this context, the use of rehabilitation robotic devices arises as an effective and complementary tool to recover gait and balance functions. Among rehabilitation devices, end effectors present some advantages and have shown encouraging outcomes. The objective of this study is twofold: to propose a general classification of devices for gait and balance rehabilitation and to provide a review of the existing end effectors for such purposes. We classified the devices into five groups: treadmills, exoskeletons, patient-guided systems, perturbation platforms, and end effectors. Overall, 55 end effectors were identified in the literature, of which 16 were commercialized. We found a disproportionate number of end effectors capable of providing both types of rehabilitation (2/55) and those focused on either balance (21/55) or gait (32/55). The analysis of their features from a mechanical standpoint (degrees of freedom, topology, and training mode) allowed us to identify the potential of parallel manipulators as driving mechanisms of end effector devices and to suggest several future research directions.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app14104147