Path control: a method for patient-cooperative robot-aided gait rehabilitation

Gait rehabilitation robots are of increasing importance in neurorehabilitation. Conventional devices are often criticized because they are limited to reproducing predefined movement patterns. Research on patient-cooperative control strategies aims at improving robotic behavior. Robots should support patients only as much as needed and stimulate them to produce maximal voluntary efforts. This paper presents a patient-cooperative strategy that allows patients to influence the timing of their leg movements along a physiologically meaningful path. In this "path control" strategy, compliant virtual walls keep the patient's legs within a "tunnel" around the desired spatial path. Additional supportive torques enable patients to move along the path with reduced effort. Graphical feedback provides visual training instructions. The path control strategy was evaluated with 10 healthy subjects and 15 subjects with incomplete spinal cord injury. The spatio-temporal characteristics of recorded kinematic data showed that subjects walked with larger temporal variability with the new strategy. Electromyographic data indicated that subjects were training more actively. A majority of iSCI subjects was able to actively control their gait timing. Thus, the strategy allows patients to train walking while being helped rather than controlled by the robot.