A new powered orthosis with hip and ankle linkage for paraplegics walking

• Published in: 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR) Vol. 2013; pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Nagai, Chikara, Hisada, Shinnosuke, Obinata, Goro, Genda, Eiichi
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.06.2013
• Subjects: Actuators; Adult; Ankle; Biomechanical Phenomena; Energy efficiency; Equipment Design; Gait - physiology; gait orthosis; Hip; Humans; Joints; Legged locomotion; Orthotic Devices; Orthotics; Paraplegia - rehabilitation; paraplegics; Postural Balance; power assist; Pulleys; Range of Motion, Articular - physiology; Young Adult
• ISBN: 9781467360227; 1467360228
• ISSN: 1945-7898; 1945-7901
• DOI: 10.1109/ICORR.2013.6650356

Several types of hip-knee-ankle-foot orthotic systems have been proposed for paraplegic walking during these decades. Hip and ankle linked orthosis (HALO) is compact one in those orthoses, which seeks to achieve a smoother-movement and user-easiness on its don/doff in paraplegic walking. The idea of HALO is to link two ankle joints with medial single joint via wires so that the orthosis keeps both feet always parallel to the floor while walking and assist the swinging of the leg. So as to reduce the consumption energy of HALO walking, we have introduced two actuators to control the ankle-joints angles in this paper. The actuators placed at hip joint in HALO allow the orthosis to have more degree-of-freedom and are able to provide a propulsive force the coupled user-orthosis system. The results of preliminary experiments with normal subjects show that the users can walk smoother and the proposed orthotic system will be able to reduce the users' consumption energy while walking.