Development of Active Gait Orthosis for Hybrid Assistive System with FES

为使截瘫患者能恢复行走，我们设计了一种与功能性电刺激相配合的辅助推车。还开发了一种新的刺激装置，以产生更适应的刺激信号模式。对辅助小车的基本性能进行了实验评价。我们证实，推车比传统的步行机更具可调性。利用所提出的下肢动力学参数识别方法，可以对每个病人进行调整。开发了用于估计预定运动的定时的感测装置，使得使用者对所提出的调节方法感觉良好，并且所需的肌肉力通过主动辅助力而减小。在不久的将来，将根据这些结果开发实用的辅助系统。特别是，所提出的方法来调整系统的每个病人和专门知识，相对于开发的致动器和传感器将是有用的实际设计。

So as to restore walking of paraplegic patients, we have designed an assisting cart which cooperates with functional electrical stimulation. A new stimulation device has also been developed to generate more adaptive patterns of stimulation signals. The basic performance of the assisting cart was evaluated experimentally. We confirmed that the cart is more adjustable than conventional walkers. The adjustment to each patient can be carried out by using proposed methods for indentifying dynamic parameters of lower extremities. Sensing devices for estimating a timing of a prespecified motion were developed so that the user feels well with the proposed adjustment method and the required muscle forces are reduced by the active assisting forces. Practical assistive systems will be developed in near future based on these results. Specially, the proposed methods for adjusting the system to each patient and the know-how with respect to the developed actuators and sensors will be useful for the practical design.