Intention-based walking support for paraplegia patients with Robot Suit HAL

By Kenta Suzuki, G. Mito, Hiroaki Kawamoto, Y. Hasegawa, Yoshiyuki Sankai. Adv. Robotics, 2007

533 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper proposes an algorithm to estimate human intentions related to walking in order to comfortably and safely support a paraplegia patient's walk. Robot Suit HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) has been developed for enhancement of a healthy person's activities and for support of a physically challenged person's daily life. The assisting method based on bioelectrical signals such as myoelectricity successfully supports a healthy person's walking. These bioelectrical signals, however, cannot be measured properly from a paraplegia patient. Therefore another interface that can estimate a patient's intentions without any manual controller is desired for robot control since a manual controller deprives a patient of his/her hand freedom. Estimation of a patient's intentions contributes to providing not only comfortable support but also safe support, because any inconformity between the robot suit motion and the patient motion results in his/her stumbling or falling. The proposed algorithm estimates a patient's intentions from a floor reaction force (FRF) reflecting a patient's weight shift during walking and standing. The effectiveness of this algorithm is investigated through experiments on a paraplegia patient who has a sensory paralysis on both legs, especially his left leg. We show that HAL supports the patient's walk properly, estimating his intentions based on the FRF, while he keeps his own balance by himself.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Occupational Therapy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7724a20850965606cc8b07009ff3bbbf98f06c8c

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In Biomedical Engineering

In Occupational Therapy

Citations in the corpus

HAL: Hybrid Assistive Limb Based on Cybernics (2007, methodology): “In this chaper, the Cybernic Autonomous Control among the cybernic control systems is applied to HAL in order to support a paraplegia patient's walking[6].”
Review of assistive strategies in powered lower-limb orthoses and exoskeletons (2015, background): “Only kinematics results were analyzed and proved the feasibility of the whole system as well as the reliability of the intention estimator [29].”
Recent developments and challenges of lower extremity exoskeletons (2015, methodology): “To date, trajectory tracking control is primarily used in LEEs for early stage rehabilitation when patients have very weak muscle strength [58,59].”
Lower Limb Wearable Robots for Assistance and Rehabilitation: A State of the Art (2016, methodology): “It should also be noted that the endurance of the wearers could not be improved significantly using HAL-5.”