A Swiss team from NCCR Robotics at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Lausanne University Hospital have developed a mobile harness and algorithms that help improve the locomotor abilities of patients with spinal cord injury or stroke.
Patients who have suffered neurological disorders or injury are rehabilitated in a process that teaches the nervous system to adopt the correct movements.
This is a major challenge: loss of muscle mass prevents people from walking correctly, and neurological wiring needs to be trained in order to relearn proper postures and walking movements. If the patient is allowed to repeat unnatural movements, the nervous system learn the flawed motion.
Body-weight support systems, such as the mobile harness used by the researchers, are already used in rehabilitation to promote natural walking in patients so the nervous system learns how to walk normally again. However, this is the first time that such a ceiling-mounted support system is used in conjunction with an algorithm to tailor the assistance to each and every patient.
The patient is carefully monitored as they move, and the algorithm takes inputs including parameters like leg movement, length of stride and muscle activity.
Based on these observations, the algorithm determines the forces to be applied to the trunk of the body, via the smart walking assist, in order to enable natural walking patterns. The harness is able to releive the patient of their own weight, push the patient forwards or backwards, to one side or the other, or a combination of the above, for a more natural posture.
In a clinical study with over 30 patients, the scientists showed that the patients wearing the smart walking assist immediately improved their locomotor abilities, enabling them to perform activities of daily living that would not be possible without the support.
As a result of the research, European partners including EPFL, the Technical University of Delft, Motek, G-Therapeutics and SUVA are developing a next-generation smart walking assist device called RYSEN. It is hoped that devices like these will provide a form of discrete and efficient assistance to aid te rehabilitation of people with neurological disorders.