Collaborative Research: Smart Shoes and Smart Socks for Abnormal Gait Diagnosis and Assistance

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This research will investigate fundamental issues needed to develop advanced sensing and mechatronic technologies for mobile assistive devices that will assist elderly people and patients who have totally or partially lost the capability to walk and/or assumed an inefficient abnormal pattern of movement. The two new sensor systems to be developed are: 1) smart shoes, developed at the University of California at Berkeley, and 2) smart socks, developed at the University of Maryland. The proposed analysis and recognition method will have the following capabilities: 1) identification of the phases of human motion, 2) quantification of the abnormality of a patient's gait, and 3) estimation of the human joint torques for the feedback control of assistive devices. The effectiveness of motion phase identification will be evaluated on human subjects who exhibit a normal gait as well as those with an abnormal gait through clinical tests. Results will be utilized in a variety of ways such as providing feedback information to patients to help them resume a normal gait. The research program also involves an international component, working with researchers at Tsukuba University, Japan on integration of these sensors and motion analysis strategies into the exoskeleton 'HAL', the most sophisticated exoskeleton available today to assist patients. The project team is multidisciplinary and international, and it includes Principal Investigators from two leading engineering schools in the United States, Dr. Byl with expertise in physical therapy, Professor Y. Sankai of Tsukuba University, graduate student researchers and undergraduate researchers. The broader impacts of this research include contributions to betterment of the quality of life of physically impaired people as well as elderly people having walking problems. It will also provide a powerful tool to physical therapists in the diagnosis of gait of patients. Experimental test setups will provide an ideal environment for undergraduate students to have mechatronics experience, and will be made available to our undergraduate laboratory course. Graduate students will travel to Japan to have academic and social experience in a culture different from those in the United States.This is a US-Japan research project on sensor for the safe and secured society under the NSF-JST agreement.