Collaborative Research: Don’t forget the foot! Exposing foot energetics to enhance foot orthoses and gait rehabilitation

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The foot and ankle play a major role in the ability to walk efficiently, which is essential for independent living and overall quality of life. Yet, the foot’s role in walking efficiency is not well understood, limiting innovation of future assistive devices. This has implications for patients with compromised strength and for the design of ankle-foot assistive devices for walking. This study aims to reveal the mechanisms that control foot energetics and apply this new understanding to assist walking for individuals with ankle-foot impairments using a novel foot brace. It is anticipated that the knowledge gained from this work will spur a shift in understanding of the foot’s role in walking, which will be applied to the design of next generation foot and ankle-foot assistive devices. As part of this collaborative research project, a broad group of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students will be trained in multidisciplinary research. The objective of this research is to reveal critical understandings of the mechanisms governing the energetics of the human foot and apply this understanding to probe and modulate the energetics of the ankle-foot systems using a novel foot orthosis. This objective will be achieved in three parts. First, metatarsophalangeal joint motion will be systematically manipulated through a series of activities and the associated changes in foot power and work will be studied via novel kinetic, multi-segment foot modeling. This will provide critical knowledge of how energy is used and transferred in the healthy ankle-foot system and enhance the ability to interpret measurements used to capture and quantify foot energetics. Next, ankle-foot energy usage and transfer will be probed using a novel deformable foot orthosis with customized forefoot stiffness to gain a deeper understanding of the healthy foot’s energetics as well as its interaction with the ankle joint. Healthy individuals will walk under footwear conditions, representing varying forefoot stiffness levels, while energetic and biomechanical motion analysis data are collected. Finally, as a proof-of-feasibility study, individuals post-stroke will walk under three conditions - barefoot, flexible shoes, and a custom orthosis with tuned forefoot stiffness - while energetic and biomechanical motion capture data are collected. The goal of this final objective is to determine if a deformable foot orthosis with customized forefoot stiffness can be used to enhance the energetics of the ankle-foot system for individuals with impaired ankle-foot energetics. This study will provide critical understanding of the human foot’s energetics and how energy usage and transfer throughout the ankle and foot can be modulated in both healthy and impaired individuals.This project is jointly funded by the Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.